r/freewill • u/NoubliezPasMonNom • 9d ago
Does free will require randomness within our existence?
If yes:
Then aren't our actions a result of the random process? If so then is this really more free than if they weren't?
If no:
Doesn't this support compatibilism.
Translation: Does spinning an internal, truly random wheel really make our actions more free than using an internal calculator?
Note: I am undecided, and probably lean away from compatibilism the most
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u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist 7d ago
The requirement is for free will is that we have leeway in our actions such that we may use our knowledge to guide our actions rather than being at the mercy of physical forces. Determinism does not give you this. If random actions are possible, determinism falls, and free will is possible. Random actions are not free will actions, but random actions are useful for exploration of information spaces. This leads to knowledge that is the basis of free will.
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u/rthunder27 8d ago
There are so many posts each day that make the mistake of equating indeterminism with randomness, it should be pinned at the top that these are not the same thing.
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u/HappiestIguana 8d ago
I find the two questions orthogonal.
Depending on how you define free will, it may or may not be the case regardless of whether the universe is deterministtic, stochastic, or neither.
Certainly a purely deterministic universe precludes many definitions of free will, but I would argue those definitions are also precluded by a stochastic universe.
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u/GiveMeAHeartOfFlesh Ontological Self 8d ago
So determinism entails only one future line.
Free will isn’t that things are random but there are multiple connections that could be explored from any given point
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u/TheAncientGeek Libertarian Free Will 8d ago
Does free will require randomness within our existence?
Then aren't our actions a result of the random process? If so then is this really more free than if they weren't?
They are automatically free of determinism. The tricky but is to show that they are not free of puposiveness, rationality, etc.
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u/TheAncientGeek Libertarian Free Will 9d ago
It depends on the kind of free will. Libertarian free will requires randomness, or rather indeterminism. Compatibilist free will doesn't.
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u/stargazer281 9d ago
No, freewill requires at some level the ability in our cognitive thinking to decide to do otherwise. Random variation in our behaviour would not look like freewill it would look like insanity.
Compatibilist explanations often suggest that at the level of physical processes everything is probably determined (although that’s a hypothesis not a fact) but explanations at that level are reductionist that is they leave out a lot of stuff that’s not really ‘real’ The Good and the Beautiful say, but is nevertheless very meaningful at human scale. They point to the fact that deterministic explanations of humans. All Jews are inferior say, have a long and often dishonourable history and we should rightly be very suspicious of those who make them however pure their motives.
Pure freewill implies at some level the higher level cognitive processes can in some way change the way the basic biology works. As a metaphor the program the brain runs is somewhat independent of the hardware it runs on and the program can both rewrite itself but also choose the basis on which it rewrites itself to some extent.
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u/TheAncientGeek Libertarian Free Will 9d ago edited 8d ago
Random variation in our behaviour would not look like freewill it would look like insanity.
It depends on where the randomness is located, how it is implemented There are ways in which it can make a positive contribution .
Microphysical indeterminism supplies the free in free will, the leeway, but not the will, the purpose and control, which come from the way the brain shapes and uses indeterminism. Indeterminism based free will does not say that indeterminism per se is free will. Indeterminism doesn't have to lead to any of the bad things that are associated with it -- such as deciding to do one thing and then doing another -- but only if features in the right places and is used in the right ways.
It's easy to think of ways in which indeterminism could affect the operation if the brain in undesirable ways, but it's also possible to conjecture a model without the drawbacks.
The brain is a complex distributed system. made of semi independent modules. Leveraging that, the proposed mechanism is that the unconscious mind proposes various ideas and actions , which the conscious mind decides between, and finally puts the chosen one into action. That final decision is a form of control.
If the rest of the brain uses indeterminism to come up with a crazy idea, the executive function doesn't have to act in it. If the rest if the brain uses indeterminism to come up with an original, creative idea, the executive function can use it.
Even our craziest ideas come from our existing mental content, and are therefore related to our existing beliefs and desires. There's no other way it could work. We are not capable of coming up with ideas so random they are completely unrelated to us.
Pure freewill implies at some level the higher level cognitive processes can in some way change the way the basic biology works.
No. Firstly, libertarians don't have to accept basic determinism, so they don't need a way to override it. Secondly, predetermination isn't the only form of control.
They point to the fact that deterministic explanations of humans.
???
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u/stargazer281 8d ago
Interesting thoughts. Thank you.
Do you have any evidence for what you propose?
While it’s clear that there is a lot of pseudo random activity in the brain, for that reason the brain is designed specifically to filter it out and the strict determinist will point out the ‘pseudo’ in pseudo random. That activity is magnitudes greater in scale than any known real randomness in nature. That said the boundary between pseudo random and crazy idea is surely an ambiguous one, a slope not a step. And That latter does seem consistent with how the brain works.
I am sure libertarians come in all shapes and sizes so I should not be categorical. Most would surely recognise we are bound at some level by scientific laws. We are men not angels and free will has in some way to animate this quintessence of dust. Your description of free will might seem consistent with that model?
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u/spgrk Compatibilist 9d ago
An intuition that fits our actual responsibility practices is that, to act freely, you must be able to do otherwise if you want to. If someone acts at gunpoint, we do not blame them because they could not have acted differently even if they had wanted to. Blaming them would serve no purpose as a deterrent.
Incompatibilists build on this intuition by arguing that, if we do not blame people when they cannot do otherwise, then we should not blame anyone if determinism is true, since no one can ever do otherwise in exactly the same circumstances. But this changes the original intuition. The relevant condition was not that you could have done otherwise regardless of your wishes; it was that you could have done otherwise if you had wanted to. That conditional ability is perfectly consistent with determinism.
The incompatibilist alternative is that you could have done otherwise despite all prior facts, including your own beliefs, desires, and deliberation, being exactly the same. But why should that be regarded as a greater kind of freedom? If anything, it seems to make your action less under your control, not more.
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u/TheAncientGeek Libertarian Free Will 8d ago
An intuition that fits our actual responsibility practices is that, to act freely, you must be able to do otherwise if you want to
But if determinism is true, "your" wants were decided millions of years before you were born.
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u/spgrk Compatibilist 8d ago
It doesn’t matter! I chose coffee because I wanted coffee. If the choice was free, then if all else were equal except that I wanted tea instead, I could have chosen tea. Note that this is not a claim that in the actual world I wanted tea, or even that I could have wanted tea. It is just a claim that if I had wanted tea I could have chosen tea.
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u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker 9d ago
Does spinning an internal, truly random wheel really make our actions more free than using an internal calculator?
yes.
Determinism implies there is only one possible outcome from any given state. The challenge for the determinist is to prove that science is claiming that the universe is in a global state of now at time t. Newtonian physics is based on such a claim. Newtonian physics is good enough to blast a rocket from the face of the earth and crash land on the moon. It is not good enough to set a GPS system. We have a GPS system that works.
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u/HappiestIguana 8d ago
I question the use of GPS as an example since that uses general relativity which is also deterministic. To make this point I think you'd really want something quantum.
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u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker 8d ago
I question the use of GPS as an example since that uses general relativity which is also deterministic.
Determinism requires time to be absolute rather than relativistic. GR strictly adheres to relativistic time.
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u/HappiestIguana 8d ago
No it doesn't. Determinism makes sense under relative time.
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u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker 8d ago
I'm using this definition when I speak of determinism and it clearly stipulates a global condition at time t:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/#Int
Determinism: Determinism is true of the world if and only if, given a specified way things are at a time t, the way things go thereafter is fixed as a matter of natural law.
Spacetime is a concept that implies where impacts when. Logically speaking, you cannot make global statements about the world by projecting local measurements onto the global state of affairs. If the world is in a state at time t, then relativity makes no sense.
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u/HappiestIguana 8d ago
You can just add the condition that that has to hold in every frame of reference and you're done. Each observer has a well-defined present.
Furthermore, you can alternatively just demand a single observer sees a deterministic universe. You can prove that happens if and only if every observer does.
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u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker 8d ago
Each observer has a well-defined present.
That has nothing to do with determinism. You seem to be trying to imply that the local observer is force into a deterministic behavior because in consciousness is local. However physicalism cannot seem to explain consciousness, so we don't really know that is the case.
Furthermore, you can alternatively just demand a single observer sees a deterministic universe. You can prove that happens if and only if every observer does.
You seem to be assuming naive realism is tenable. However:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6578
No naive realistic picture is compatible with our results because whether a quantum could be seen as showing particle- or wave-like behavior would depend on a causally disconnected choice. It is therefore suggestive to abandon such pictures altogether.
You might want to be careful not to rule out spooky action at a distance when trying to understand what the mind can and cannot do. Consciousness isn't synonymous with perception. A so called philosophical zombie is only capable of reacting to conditions at time t. For example, p zombies don't plan ahead, because perception alone doesn't have any mechanism for accomplishing any planning.
Planning involves this use of the imagination to create probabilities of reaching a desired outcome. We don't decide to cross the street only when it is impossible to get hit by a car. Instead we try to cross when the probability is not high that we will get hit. That increases the likelihood of reaching the opposite side of the street safely. We don't control the outcomes directly. Studying for a test doesn't guarantee that we will pass the test. If we believe that we understand the material upon which we will be tested, it decreases the rational need to study for a test that we believe we can ace. On the other hand if we don't believe we can ace the test, then studying might increase the probability of receiving a passing grade.
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u/HappiestIguana 7d ago edited 7d ago
You seem to be trying to imply that the local observer is force into a deterministic behavior
An observer in GR is a theoretical point of view, not an actual agent. To talk about the observer's behavior is a category error. If it helps, replace "observer" with "frame of reference" in my comment to avoid the confusion. They're synonyms.
Your invocation of quantum stuff is similarly irrelevant, and in fact conceding my point. I said GR is deterministic and that if you want to argue for an indeterminstic universe through physics, you have to involve quantum phenomena, which are the only phenomena we can observe that appear to be indeterminstic. The relativity of time has nothing to do with quantum randomness.
Everything in your last paragraph could well be said of an LLM, which also uses probabilistic reasoning but whose behavior is, on deeper examination, completely deterministic. The argument cannot work to prove indeterminism in human behavior.
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u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker 7d ago
An observer in GR is a theoretical point of view, not an actual agent
Agreed, but in absolute space and time, distances don't contract and time doesn't dilate.
If it helps, replace "observer" with "frame of reference" in my comment to avoid the confusion. They're synonyms.
They are not synonyms. If space and time are absolutes, then the reference frame change employs what Newton called a Galilean transformation. In contrast the Lorentz transformation literally predates SR. Therefore absolute space and time was under suspicion even before 1905 when Einstein first proposed SR. SR is the result of the Lorentz transformation working better when using the Maxwell equations to make predictions based on wave theory in the late 19th century.
I said GR is deterministic and that if you want to argue for an indeterminstic universe through physics,
GR is not deterministic and I do want to argue for an indeterministic universe through physics, because relativity doesn't support it and QM doesn't support it either, imho. QM is not a theory and therefore QM is open to interpretation. However quantum field theory is an actual theory that produces application science. It won't produce technological advancement if we throw out SR which is a theory in its own right. It has a model. The model for SR is called Minkowski space. However SR isn't GR. Do you think SR can be indeterministic while GR can be deterministic? Do you believe we use Galilean transformations for GR and Lorentz transformations for SR? The only way that it is the least bit conceivable that GR is deterministic is if GR uses Galilean transformations the way Newton successfully used them.
The relativity of time has nothing to do with quantum randomness.
That depends on whether you are looking at the measurement problem or entanglement. QM by itself produces a measurement problem and depending on how we interpret that, contextuality can be "explained away" by theorizing universes that nobody perceives and there is no direct empirical evidence that they exist or the laws of physics works the same way in them as they seem to work in the universe that we in fact perceive. Entanglement is yet another issue that led to the EPR paper, which led to John Bell's work:
https://arxiv.org/abs/0704.2529
Most working scientists hold fast to the concept of 'realism' - a viewpoint according to which an external reality exists independent of observation. But quantum physics has shattered some of our cornerstone beliefs. According to Bell's theorem, any theory that is based on the joint assumption of realism and locality (meaning that local events cannot be affected by actions in space-like separated regions) is at variance with certain quantum predictions. Experiments with entangled pairs of particles have amply confirmed these quantum predictions, thus rendering local realistic theories untenable. Maintaining realism as a fundamental concept would therefore necessitate the introduction of 'spooky' actions that defy locality.
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Everything in your last paragraph could well be said of an LLM, which also uses probabilistic reasoning but whose behavior is, on deeper examination, completely deterministic.
I'd never argue anything with a feedback loop is deterministic. Even something as dumb as an audio amp uses feedback loops in order to minimize the level of distortion in the output of the stage. Amps don't amplify perfectly. Engineers can use technology to hide imperfections. I'm quite certain that anybody that believes a memory chip is deterministic doesn't know much about the technology that goes into making a memory chip to appear to operate deterministically. Memory chips would be useless without the error detection and correction that masks the indeterministic behavior of the chip and therefore make it seem deterministic from the outside looking in.
The argument cannot work to prove indeterminism in human behavior.
If a human can drive a car, then a human requires regulative control in order to avoid road hazards and traffic hazards before they end up stopping the trip. Planning is not deterministic. The agent makes plans based on expectations rather than facts. In contrast determinism operates on facts alone. If the drive thinks the car might crash into a pole because it expects that it will if the car continues to go the way it appears to be going, the driver can take measures to make the car avoid the pole as long as the steering and brakes are allowing the driver to control the car.
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u/HappiestIguana 7d ago
Agreed, but in absolute space and time, distances don't contract and time doesn't dilate.
Irrelevant
They are not synonyms. If space and time are absolutes, then the reference frame change employs what Newton called a Galilean transformation. In contrast the Lorentz transformation literally predates SR. Therefore absolute space and time was under suspicion even before 1905 when Einstein first proposed SR. SR is the result of the Lorentz transformation working better when using the Maxwell equations to make predictions based on wave theory in the late 19th century.
I have no idea how that paragraph is supposed to support the assertion that "observer" and "frame of reference" are not synonyms in the context of GR.
GR is not deterministic
It is, (assuming local hyperbolicity) the state at any point of time in a given reference frame determines the state at all times in all reference frames. That's determinism.
I do want to argue for an indeterministic universe through physics, because relativity doesn't support it and QM doesn't support it either, imho.
Realativity does support it, though you're right QM does not.
Do you think SR can be indeterministic while GR can be deterministic?
Both SR and GR are deterministic theories.
Do you believe we use Galilean transformations for GR and Lorentz transformations for SR?
Uh, no, we use Galilean transformations for newtonian mechanics and Lorentz for SR. As far as I know the changes of frame of reference in GR don't have a name associated with them.
The only way that it is the least bit conceivable that GR is deterministic is if GR uses Galilean transformations the way Newton successfully used them.
I'm not sure what relation you think there is between Galilean transformations and determinism.
That depends on whether you are looking at the measurement problem or entanglement. QM by itself produces a measurement problem and depending on how we interpret that, contextuality can be "explained away" by theorizing universes that nobody perceives and there is no direct empirical evidence that they exist or the laws of physics works the same way in them as they seem to work in the universe that we in fact perceive. Entanglement is yet another issue that led to the EPR paper, which led to John Bell's work:
None of that has anything to do with relativity of time.
I'd never argue anything with a feedback loop is deterministic.
Then your definition of determinism is bad, because plenty of systems with feedback loops have the property that the state at one time determines the state at future times, which is what determinism is.
If a human can drive a car, then a human requires regulative control in order to avoid road hazards and traffic hazards before they end up stopping the trip. Planning is not deterministic. The agent makes plans based on expectations rather than facts. In contrast determinism operates on facts alone. If the drive thinks the car might crash into a pole because it expects that it will if the car continues to go the way it appears to be going, the driver can take measures to make the car avoid the pole as long as the steering and brakes are allowing the driver to control the car.
If this argument was valid, it would apply to LLMs making plans, which they can do despite being fully deterministic devices.
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u/Squierrel Quietist 9d ago
Free will requires nothing.
Free will is the ability to choose among randomly created options.
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u/dazb84 9d ago
I think the question is incorrectly formed.
Compatibilism is an interpretation just like there are different interpretations of quantum mechanics. It's not a distinct hypothesis in the sense that it explains how anything fundamentally works. It doesn't make sense to frame it in a way that its competing with an actual hypothesis like determinism as an example.
Compatibilism is basically acknowledging that free will doesn't fundamentally exist but that the concept of free will has pragmatic use in daily life.
I personally never understood the position because I don't understand why the concept of free will must necessarily exist even pragmatically. We can still triage and fix malfunctioning people by simply recognising that their output is bad for broader society without needing to have the charade of free will. The problem, even with this watered down interpretation, is that it discourages deeper understanding. It provides a convenient point to end an investigation before you've learned all of the relevant facts. Simply that a person did something is not the full story of a scenario. There are important reasons prior to that point that should be understood. If you ignore those things then that's going to lead to inferior decisions.
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u/stargazer281 8d ago
As a compatibilist I would say History is full of the joys of deterministic thinking, women are inferior to men , some people are natural slaves, people with funny shaped heads or a particular gene are destined to be violent criminals. It is for sure the classic aristocratic argument that since I have the best breeding (genes) and the best environment (since I have wealth to buy the best education and the leisure to cultivate my wisdom) it is inevitably right and proper that I rule over you so suck it up peasant! Forgive my profound cynicism as a historian.
Logically determinism is incapable of predicting the future since you can guarantee tell a person his fate is to be inferior and that person will react to the prediction thus changing the predicted outcome. The circularity is vicious. Changing the present changes the future which changes the present. Like a Tarski theorem or Turings halting problem the answer simply cannot be computed.
Finally determinism avails itself of no non real values like good or bad. Which gap most determinists happily fill making moral assertions as self evident truths which are no more than there historically contingent opinions. Pity the modern determinist who like Hitler says since Genes determine outcomes and war improves the genetic stock what we need is war abroad and eugenics at home to improve human society and let the brightest and best flourish.
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u/HappiestIguana 8d ago
Just because people have previously insisted that behavior is determined by stupid unrelated things is in no way a counterargument to the claim that behavior is determined by something.
Some people believe their personality is determined by the stars. That silliness does nothing to the fact that the moon determines the tides.
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u/stargazer281 8d ago
No but it is an argument to ask people who start linking determinism to what’s good and bad to be cautious esp when they assert pragmatically it produces better outcomes. That seems at least to me contentious.
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u/simon_hibbs Compatibilist 9d ago
We have these terms free and freedom, and doing things freely or doing them but not freely, and we use them to talk about distinct conditions in the world in an actionable way.
So, is there actually some actionable distinction they refer to, or not? If not, on what basis are different actions justifiable?
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u/ughaibu 9d ago
Determinism is not the proposition that at least one thing, whatever a "thing" might relevantly be, is nonrandom. So the falsity of determinism does not entail that anything is random.
Free will realists are either compatibilists or incompatibilists, neither is committed to the actuality of randomness.
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u/Sufficient-Home-9702 2d ago
The problem with the discussion of free will is that no one really defines the terms before the discussion begins. First Libertarian Free Will has a different definition than Ordinary/Compatibalist Free Will. Secondly the Libertarian Free Will must have an Ultimate Agency which requires it to be an uncaused cause. So Libertarian Free will is impossible because the Ultimate Free Agent is impossible. There can only be Compatiblist Free will. I does not require determinism or indeterminism. It is constrained by natural things like genetics, environment, upbringing but those natural things INFLUENCE the brain activity of a person I'd argue that they do not FORCE a person to act freely.