Free Will Incompatibilism: The Consequence Argument
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 22 ม.ค. 2021
- Are deterministic laws of nature compatible with free will? According to Peter van Inwagen's "Consequence Argument," the answer is "No." The past and the laws of nature guarantee what the future will be. And the past and the laws of nature are not "up to me." And what results from them is also not "up do me." But my actions result from them. So my actions are not "up to me."
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very well done on the video again!
very clearly explained - Nice Work!
Of course Van Inwagen thinks we have free will but this video puts forward his consequence argument so clearly and persuasively, I fear a bunch of viewers will shrug and conclude we don't have free will! Nice work-a complex argument presented simply.
Thanks! And yes, van Inwagen believes in free will. I could see how this video could suggest otherwise. He's an incompatibilist, but thinks we have free will so determinism must be false. If I remember correctly though, he doesn't argue much for a specific positive account of free will. He thinks the nature of free will is mysterious.
Why fear the conclusion we don't have free will? Free will does appear to be impossible regardless of whether determinism or indeterminism is true. And that is what Van Inwagen thinks. The correct conclusion is to believe we don't have free will.
@@stephenlawrence4903You're very close to PVI's view but with one small (important) wrinkle. He agrees with you that free will _appears_ impossible regardless of determinism (DET) or indeterminism(IND). But he goes one step further: it also _appears_ we have free will (FW). In other words, we have a genuine aporetic triad here. Or if you prefer plain language, a real pickle. 🙂:
(1) FW _seems_ incompatible with DET
(2) FW _seems_ incompatible with IND
(3) it _seems_ we have FW.
The whole philosophical debate, according to PVI, is about deciding which of these needs to be rejected, in spite of appearances. In the end, he tentatively discards the incompatibility of FW and IND, on the grounds that doing so preserves the most explanatory power. I agree with PVI about this, and in the same tentative way. These questions are difficult and seeing things clearly comes hard.
But your question remains.Why not instead discard FW? it is not fear so much as a sober appreciation of the indispensable role of free will for all that is good in our lives: friendship, family, community, meaning. Put differently, free will is an important datum to be preserved not just as a matter of good philosophical method but as a matter of real life import.
Side note: the recent PhilPapers survey shows that only about 12% of contemporary philosophers subscribe to the "no free will" view. Now that doesn't settle anything. Perhaps you and the 12% are correct about no free will! I hold plenty of minority views myself. But the vast majority of philosophers _do_ hold to free will and do so on the basis of good methodological and substantive reasons.
@@LetsGetLogical So if it didn't appear that we have free will then there would be no good argument for free will at all and we could know we don't have it,
Well, it does not appear that we have free will! Choices do appear to be compatible with determinism.
On what philosophers believe most are compatibilists. Dennett is a good example. The important thing is he's defining free will so that it's compatible with determinism. He is also clear that we do not have the free will people ordinarily believe in which is what is supposed to get us what he calls "absolute responsibility". He does think that is a fantasy, and says so. Unless you're a compatibilist, when you talk about free will you're talking about libertarian free will, which the majority of philosophers reject because it makes no sense.
I think free will is a nasty piece of fiction, so obviously disagree it plays an indespensible role in anything that is good.
I think it is possible to extend the consequence argument to indeterminism. The step to make is to think how we could have done otherwise if determinism is true. We find there are two possible ways.
1) We could have had a different past prior to the choice.
2)The laws of nature could be different.
Now this helps us see the problem better. To have done otherwise circumstances out of our control would have had to have been different.
And that we can apply to indeterminism and get the same result.
Well, knowledge indeterminism is quite common. It is often the case that we do not know what will happen or even what we will decide to do. But causal indeterminism would make it impossible for us to even guess what might happen next, because it would be theoretically unpredictable.
Reliable cause and effect is required to predict the consequences of our actions. The ability to predict is logically required in order to control what we are doing. The ability to control what we are doing is how we accomplish everything that we are able to do. The ability to do things is the essence of freedom.
So, causal indeterminism would erase freedom. And causal determinism is a prerequisite to all of our freedoms, including free will.
Knowledge indeterminism, or simply, uncertainty, is why we have such notions as possibility, option, alternative, as well as notions like ability, can, may, might, etc.
What we "can" do constrains what we "will" do, because we will never be able to do what we cannot do.
But what we "will" do never constrains what we "can" do or "could have" done.
These words have a logic to them which cannot be overridden by figurative speech.
「コンテンツを調整する必要があります」、
I guess a lot depends on how you unpack "up to me"
That's true! Gallons of ink has been spilled over accounts of what it means to have the "ability to do otherwise" or to "freely choose" one thing or another. I purposefully tried to stick to the language of what is "up to me" because that's the language that van Inwagen uses in many places and perhaps refocuses our attention on the more general idea behind this problem. But of course, debates about whether determinism rules out one's "Ability to do otherwise" could have an impact on what it means for something to be "up to me"!
@@ThinkingAboutStuff The ability to do otherwise is built into the language and the logic of choosing. Choosing is a deterministic operation in which two or more options are input, some criteria of comparative evaluation is applied, and based on that evaluation a single choice is output. Each option is an "I CAN", as in "I can fix pancakes or I can fix eggs". The choice at the end is an "I WILL". By logical necessity (required by the choosing operation), there must always be at least two 'I CAN's", two distinct things that we CAN do if we choose to do it. At the end of the choosing operation, we have the single inevitable "I WILL" plus at least one "I COULD HAVE" (past tense of the "I CAN"). So, even in a world of perfectly reliable causation, whenever a choosing operation appears in the causal chain, "I COULD HAVE done otherwise" will ALWAYS BE TRUE. However, "I WOULD HAVE done otherwise" will ALWAYS BE FALSE".
And that's how everyone who has not been infected by the philosophical paradox uses those terms. "I did fix the pancakes, but I could have fixed eggs instead."
For a longer explanation, see marvinedwards.me/2020/09/25/yes-i-could-have-done-otherwise/
@@marvinedwards737 What everybody does is leave out that to have selected a different option either the past prior to the choice would have had to have been different or the laws of nature. So everybody leaves out that things out of our control would have had to have been different for us to have done otherwise. And so everybody is deluded about this. You can't but be deluded without thinking it through, just because of what is left out. And it's an empirical fact that people leave these things out and usually will deny them even if confronted with the facts.
@@stephenlawrence4903 The question is why you would include them in the first place. The Big Bang is not the meaningful or relevant cause of anything that any of us do. It is certainly an event that is included in all of the causal chains leading up to our choices. But it is not a meaningful or relevant cause. So, what is your point in insisting that we include it?
Like replaying a record, Duh'h !
Dig this video. Did you catch the show Devs? It was an entertaining sci-fi spin on these ideas.
I hadn't heard of it, but just watched the trailer. Looks pretty good. Sometimes science fiction can be a fantastic way to explore and develop rich philosophical ideas.
where is the trailer?
Compatibilism is wrong
First, the premises of the argument are false. From the moment of birth, the past and the laws of nature cease to be entirely external influences. You see, Junior happens to be a distinct package of those laws of nature acting with a will of its own. And from that point forward his present actions and his present choices will become part of the past that will causally determines the future within his domain of influence.
For example, the newborn immediately begins a negotiation for control with its physical and social environment. The newborn will cry out for its feeding at 2AM, immediately changing the lives of its parents.
Junior is not a passive object controlled by external forces. Junior is the source of natural forces acting upon other objects in the world within his reach. And parents realize this as they repeatedly pick up his toys thrown from his crib.
A world of perfectly reliable cause and effect does not change who and what Junior is. Junior is a center of causal agency. What goes on inside him can affect what goes on outside him. He is as much a part of the past and the laws of nature, as any other object in the physical universe.
When he is old enough to make decisions for himself, his deliberate actions will be up to him, and no other object in the physical universe can be said to control his thoughts or actions.
Free will is a choice we make for ourselves that is free of coercion and other forms of undue influence (mental illness, hypnosis, manipulation, etc.).
Second, your definition of determinism is incorrect with regards to possibilities. Determinism may safely assert that there will be one, and only one, ACTUAL future. However, determinism cannot assert that there is only one POSSIBLE future. Possibilities exist solely within the imagination. No one can drive across the possibility of a bridge. They can only drive across an actual bridge. However, we cannot build an actual bridge without first imagining a possible bridge. And we can have as many possible bridges, and as man possible futures, as we can imagine.
Every possibility that we can imagine is considered "real" if it can be actualized if we choose to actualize it. If we have the skills and resources to build the bridge then it is a real possibility, even if it never gets built in reality.
In your example, even your newborn's action is a result of evolutionary programming and environmental stimuli (the body it has, the place and time that it exists, etc). And the same goes for an adult's action. The brain outputs an inevitable outcome based on its evolved decision making mechanisms, influenced by stored memories, habits, chemical balance, etc., all traceable back to the Past and the Laws of Nature. The sum total of all that person is in that moment, is merely another factor of physics, albeit a complex one, that contributes to the one and only possible outcome of the "choice." Even a figment of imagination directly results from, amongst all the other factors that might influence a state of mind, the precise mix of physical data stored in the neurons, and in no way indicates a free will.
@@JakeTK421 I'm presuming a world of perfectly reliable cause and effect, where every event, from the motion of the planets to the thoughts going through your head right now, was causally necessary from any prior point in eternity and inevitably would happen. Now, within the context of a deterministic universe, we find it useful to distinguish the responsibility of the bank teller who hands the robber the money, from the responsibility of the bank robber, who threatens to blow her head off. The notion of free will makes this empirical distinction between a deliberate act (the robber) and a coerced act (the bank teller).
Causal necessity/inevitability makes itself irrelevant by its own ubiquity. It is like a constant that appears on both sides of every equation, and can be safely subtracted from both sides without affecting the result. Because every event is equally inevitable, the notion of universal inevitability never makes any meaningful distinction between two events, such as the behavior of the bank robber versus the behavior of the bank teller.
The only information that universal causal necessity can give us is, "Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be." And that's not very helpful at all.
And causal necessity, being universal, is not something that anyone can, or needs to be, free of. What I will inevitably do is exactly identical to me just being me, choosing what I choose, and doing what I do. Clearly that is not in any way a meaningful or relevant constraint.
It works out like this: free will makes a meaningful distinction that we can actually use to assess someone's moral or legal responsibility for their actions.
But causal necessity makes no meaningful or relevant distinctions at all. The rational mind simply acknowledges it, and then ignores it. And yetthe hard determinist keeps bringing it up, as if it actually meant something. But it doesn't.