Free-Will and Causality - Can there be both?

[Belinda]

H2ouse wrote:

Belinda, I'm not so sure of your definition. You also don't believe free-will can exist, I think, but you appear to acknowledge that decisions can be relatively free (thus, also, relatively constrained) depending largely on the rational skills of the humans or other animals involved. Does this refer to a similar idea to that just introduced by Bricklayer, of 'contingent' will? I've not come across this term before: but this concept maybe closer to my idea of free-will than RJG's formulation. Belinda, do you agree that your use of the term 'absolute free-will' is close to RJG's definition, whereas your descriptions of relatively free decision making might be covered by 'contingent' will? (But maybe not, because I think you are also arguing that the freedom referred to in 'relatively free' decisions means freedom to approach the situation logically rather than instinctively -- you do not mean freedom to make the decision on ones own grounds: by free-will.)

That's correct. I don't mean by 'Free Will' the freedom to make the decision on one's own grounds. By 'Free Will' I mean the power of origination which in its turn implies that the event in question ,such as human decision, had no predisposing or concurrent causes of it.(I struggle with the word 'contingent' so if you don't mind I won't comment on it.)

RJG write in a subsequent post that the no-Free Will scenario is an ugly one. I can see from that point of view, but I also see that human reason can be a contributory cause of human freedom from many, although not all, predisposing and concurrent causes. Only the human wants to be entirely free of causation, Dogs and trees want to do what dogs and trees do and they are not on any quest to change what they are. The human wants to explore how to make the world a better place, or at least change the world so that it is better for himself.The human is discontented with the natural world as given. It is this discontent that makes the human a tragedy or a comedy because the human is always striving against the status quo. The human also appreciates the beauty of the non-human. I don't find the no-Free Will scenario ugly because the non-human does not care and the human tries unavailingly to be God. These two facts are beautiful. The human does actually advance in reason towards truth and freedom but can never entirely get to the goal.

Free Will is supernatural because the putative Free Will act is outside of causation. True, causation may not exist but if so there is no ethical or cognitive advantage to Free Will as, if causation did not exist, the putative Free Will choice would be a truly random choice.

[Vojos]

H2ouse wrote:

Belinda, I'm not so sure of your definition. You also don't believe free-will can exist, I think, but you appear to acknowledge that decisions can be relatively free (thus, also, relatively constrained) depending largely on the rational skills of the humans or other animals involved. Does this refer to a similar idea to that just introduced by Bricklayer, of 'contingent' will? I've not come across this term before: but this concept maybe closer to my idea of free-will than RJG's formulation. Belinda, do you agree that your use of the term 'absolute free-will' is close to RJG's definition, whereas your descriptions of relatively free decision making might be covered by 'contingent' will? (But maybe not, because I think you are also arguing that the freedom referred to in 'relatively free' decisions means freedom to approach the situation logically rather than instinctively -- you do not mean freedom to make the decision on ones own grounds: by free-will.)

That's correct. I don't mean by 'Free Will' the freedom to make the decision on one's own grounds. By 'Free Will' I mean the power of origination which in its turn implies that the event in question ,such as human decision, had no predisposing or concurrent causes of it.(I struggle with the word 'contingent' so if you don't mind I won't comment on it.)

RJG write in a subsequent post that the no-Free Will scenario is an ugly one. I can see from that point of view, but I also see that human reason can be a contributory cause of human freedom from many, although not all, predisposing and concurrent causes. Only the human wants to be entirely free of causation, Dogs and trees want to do what dogs and trees do and they are not on any quest to change what they are. The human wants to explore how to make the world a better place, or at least change the world so that it is better for himself.The human is discontented with the natural world as given. It is this discontent that makes the human a tragedy or a comedy because the human is always striving against the status quo. The human also appreciates the beauty of the non-human. I don't find the no-Free Will scenario ugly because the non-human does not care and the human tries unavailingly to be God. These two facts are beautiful. The human does actually advance in reason towards truth and freedom but can never entirely get to the goal.

Free Will is supernatural because the putative Free Will act is outside of causation. True, causation may not exist but if so there is no ethical or cognitive advantage to Free Will as, if causation did not exist, the putative Free Will choice would be a truly random choice.

Great post!

I can't see why truly Free Will would be something to strive for. It would mean you'd lose yourself in the process and the choice would be totally impersonal. We are able to trace many of our "causative forces" when we are going to make a choice, we are rational beings and can reflect and free us from those forces to different degrees. To me, Free Will is the ability to direct it, some are more controlled by their will or forces than others. I.e. some are more able to not immediately act on natural instincts, impulses and so on. Some are more able to free themselves from past experience than others. Some are more able to get in contact with their "Dionysian Spirit" and inspire and create beyond any concept of will, than others, and so on.

Free Will, in my opinion is the ability to DIRECT it. Through the different resources we humans have at disposal, to different degrees depending on the individual.

[RJG]

From my viewpoint, both of you (McDoodle and H2ouse) seem to prefer to stand back and look at this problem from a distance. It appears to me that you are afraid to come in a take a closer look, as if the faraway view is much more comforting. I detect that your primary motive for this philosophical dalliance is first and foremost to find justification in that which makes you feel-good. The secondary motive may then be to gain real truth (and only so long as it does not conflict with motive 1).

You prefer to stay in the audience discussing the amazement of the magician's magic trick, rather than to walk on stage and examine the ‘magic’ for yourself. You prefer to discuss, hypothesize, and theorize amongst your fellow audience members. I believe that if you truly want to know if this is true magic or just simply an illusion, then you have the power to walk on stage, ask the magician to repeat his magic, so you can take a closer look at the details. In relation to personal free-will, you and only you, have the power to closely examine the variables of your own free-will. Ask yourself to perform a free-will decision, and then closely examine it. Continually repeat as necessary, until you conclude one way or the other. But don’t stand back at a distance and proclaim the magic of free-will without the attempt at a sincere and direct research.

Therefore I conclude that you enjoy this feel-good wonderment of the magic and the justification discussions with your fellow audience members, and accept this magic as the default reality, so as to continue living in this blissful state. Your primary motivation appears (to me) to maintain bliss, not to find the real truths.

On another thought, maybe blissfulness is the way we should all live our lives. I know how heartbroken I was to find out that Santa Claus was not real. Life is too short not to enjoy and live blissfully, right?

[Mcdoodle]

From my viewpoint, both of you (McDoodle and H2ouse) seem to prefer to stand back and look at this problem from a distance. It appears to me that you are afraid to come in a take a closer look, as if the faraway view is much more comforting. I detect that your primary motive for this philosophical dalliance is first and foremost to find justification in that which makes you feel-good. The secondary motive may then be to gain real truth (and only so long as it does not conflict with motive 1).

You prefer to stay in the audience discussing the amazement of the magician's magic trick, rather than to walk on stage and examine the ‘magic’ for yourself. You prefer to discuss, hypothesize, and theorize amongst your fellow audience members. I believe that if you truly want to know if this is true magic or just simply an illusion, then you have the power to walk on stage, ask the magician to repeat his magic, so you can take a closer look at the details. In relation to personal free-will, you and only you, have the power to closely examine the variables of your own free-will. Ask yourself to perform a free-will decision, and then closely examine it. Continually repeat as necessary, until you conclude one way or the other. But don’t stand back at a distance and proclaim the magic of free-will without the attempt at a sincere and direct research.

Therefore I conclude that you enjoy this feel-good wonderment of the magic and the justification discussions with your fellow audience members, and accept this magic as the default reality, so as to continue living in this blissful state. Your primary motivation appears (to me) to maintain bliss, not to find the real truths.

On another thought, maybe blissfulness is the way we should all live our lives. I know how heartbroken I was to find out that Santa Claus was not real. Life is too short not to enjoy and live blissfully, right?

That's a bit patronising RJG, perhaps you don't intend the tone but that's how it comes over. I assume we're all equals here and hope you do.

You still don't reply to the question: 'How do you know what a human action is based on? There is no psychology I know of which can satisfactorily answer this question. ' Just because you believe a reason is there for an action, doesn't mean it is there, in itself.

Your last reply seems to recommend yet further introspection. I don't see how that in itself will lead to anything other than some sort of belief in greater self-knowledge, or self-absorption.

Some days, esepcially confronted for instance by great drama, or novels, or paintings, it seems to me that the closer we peer at how humans act, the more mysterious and strange their works become. Evidently you don't feel that!

As for finding bliss or comfort in free-will - I find the contrary. Freedom can be a painful business. That's what all that Sartreian existential angst is all about. Self-knowledge certainly doesn't lead to bliss, in my case, but to discomfort and dissatisfaction.

[Belinda]

McDoodle wrote:

Your last reply seems to recommend yet further introspection. I don't see how that in itself will lead to anything other than some sort of belief in greater self-knowledge, or self-absorption

Greater self knowledge is exactly what can, if anything can, persuade you that all your actions have causes.Psychoanalysis is founded upon determinism.

By the way, if you read 'Les Jeux Sont Faits' you see that Sartre was at least ambivalent about determinism and probably believed in it. Freedom for Sartre was authentic striving to overcome reactive causes, not the ultimate success of the endeavour.If Sartre had felt comfort and satisfaction with the status quo of the Nazi Occupation he would not have been in the Resistance.

[Mcdoodle]

McDoodle wrote:

Your last reply seems to recommend yet further introspection. I don't see how that in itself will lead to anything other than some sort of belief in greater self-knowledge, or self-absorption

Greater self knowledge is exactly what can, if anything can, persuade you that all your actions have causes.Psychoanalysis is founded upon determinism.

By the way, if you read 'Les Jeux Sont Faits' you see that Sartre was at least ambivalent about determinism and probably believed in it. Freedom for Sartre was authentic striving to overcome reactive causes, not the ultimate success of the endeavour.If Sartre had felt comfort and satisfaction with the status quo of the Nazi Occupation he would not have been in the Resistance.

Sorry, yes, I don't mean to blame Jean-Paul for how I've interpreted his angle on things.

I suppose greater self-knowledge can persuade you that all your actions have causes. But I don't see why it can't equally persuade you of the opposite. Psychoanalysis, like RJG (as I see it, RJG is welcome to correct me), begins by believing in causal determinism then goes looking for the causes, it doesn't demonstrate the truth of causal determinism. Scientifically psychoanalysis hasn't stood the test of time even if lots of people still practise it or variants of it.

I've been reflecting, a propos this debate, on when a friend of mine was paranoid. Interestingly a person suffering from paranoia over-believes (as the rest of us would see it) in causes. Every event has a cause, focused on that person. Nothing is accidental. Persuading them of chance, randomness and more complex causation is an important part of hauling them back into our everyday world. Sorry if this is a side-issue

[Vojos]

Sartre's said something like: free choice is choosing your values, later in life your determined to act upon those values, and that for him was freedom. Something in that direction. Which is really flawed because how much control are you in over your values, some are maybe predisposed from nature, and others a result of your upbringing, others maybe both. But I haven't read Being and Nothingness' so I'm on a bit thin ice. Just basing this on some radio-discussions by different philosophers.

If you want freedom, read Schopenhauer.

[Belinda]

McDoodle wrote:

I've been reflecting, a propos this debate, on when a friend of mine was paranoid. Interestingly a person suffering from paranoia over-believes (as the rest of us would see it) in causes. Every event has a cause, focused on that person. Nothing is accidental. Persuading them of chance, randomness and more complex causation is an important part of hauling them back into our everyday world. Sorry if this is a side-issue

It is relevant because paranoia is a fact. Chance and randomness are much the same, 'randomness' in the context of 'chance' meaning statistical randomnness or unpredictability.(The other, metaphysical, meaning of 'randomness' is causelessness).Complex causation is what paranoid people need to understand and live by, and all of us should for our peace of mind accept that we cannot control every outcome of causes.


That we cannot control every outcome of causes is what makes we personally powerless ordinary people who are not paranoid turn to God's Providence, petitionary prayer, or to science and reason , according to what the society has to offer in the way of indoctrination or education.


May I alter slightly what McDoodle has written? To say that paranoid people may be hauled back into everyday life by relinquishing attempts to control what cannot be controlled(which is acceptance of unpredictability/chance) and also understand that the paranoid person is of little interest to most people and therefore her existence is not such an important cause as she presumed it to be.

[RJG]

That's a bit patronising RJG, perhaps you don't intend the tone but that's how it comes over. I assume we're all equals here and hope you do.

I’m sorry if the post seemed patronising. Maybe I could have worded it differently. Regardless, it appears to me that your true intent is not to find real truth. Using the excuse that you won’t take a closer look because you may not be able to trust what you believe, confirms this. (McDoodle: “I don't accept this line of reasoning. If you take a closer look, you may well find that you 'believe' there was a reason.”)

You are the only one that can see and know ‘your’ own free-will experience. (No one else can tell you how ‘your’ free-will works). Instead of looking closer at your own free-will choices, you prefer instead to stay on the sideline and speculate with others. Again, if you truly wanted to know the real truth (good, bad, or ugly), then you would take a closer look, examine, and re-examine, actual free-will moments of your own, but instead you appear to be searching for the ‘justification’ of free-will from others.

Though, whatever your true intent should be no matter to me. So I apologize if what I said sounded patronising.

You still don't reply to the question: 'How do you know what a human action is based on?

(Not sure how this question is relevant to the discussion of free-will, but will answer anyways) --- Through introspection, I believe my actions are caused by my thoughts and feelings.

...it seems to me that the closer we peer at how humans act, the more mysterious and strange their works become. Evidently you don't feel that!

This is an odd thing for you to say. Is this further justification (or excuse) why we shouldn't look closer?

[Mcdoodle]

...it appears to me that your true intent is not to find real truth. Using the excuse that you won’t take a closer look because you may not be able to trust what you believe, confirms this. (McDoodle: “I don't accept this line of reasoning. If you take a closer look, you may well find that you 'believe' there was a reason.”)

I see. I think this is just that you're confusing how I go about life in general with how I might enquire here, in an attempt at rigour, in a philosophical sense. Personally I'm often taking a closer look at my own thoughts, feelings and experiences. I've had half a lifetime of being a creative writer and teacher of creative writing. In those spheres your voyages into yourself, or into a 'character' you create or act, are a staple of searching for truths. I keep mentioning in other places that to me truths found in art can be more profound than those derived from logic - for instance, I think humility before any great work of art is simple proof against solipsism, regardless of the seemingly endless logical highways and byways people are prepared to go twisting around. And just personally, psychologically, through drilling into your own experiences you can arrive at great insights: I wasn't trying to deny that at all. But that doesn't lead me to accept that because a person asserts they've found a reason for why they did something, even after profound introspection, they're necessarily right.

You still don't reply to the question: 'How do you know what a human action is based on?

(Not sure how this question is relevant to the discussion of free-will, but will answer anyways) --- Through introspection, I believe my actions are caused by my thoughts and feelings..

I think you are justifying an opposition to free-will on the basis of this introspection, that's why I pressed you on it. For myself, through introspection I believe that I can trace causes for most of my actions. I very much doubt you can find 100% causes for actions. But that isn't to say there are or aren't 100% causes. I'm just saying that I don't see how introspection can untie this knot, when we know that human beings are animals that love to find causes for events, and that in many other ways introspection is unreliable on its own, when compared with other people's experience, or research data about behaviour.

[RJG]

McDoodle, I ran across this article and thought of you. http://lesswrong.com/lw/oj/probability_is_in_the_mind/ You may find this an interesting read.

[Belinda]

I read the article and I thought it was meant to explain that probability is no more than a heuristic by which we try to make predictions about the future or try to explain the past.

That we cannot know other than by means of sophisticated statistics or alternatively common sense, or even magic, that what future events will be is no more than the observation that we are temporal.

The coin is invariably biased which is a way of saying that the landing position of the coin is a necessary event whichever position it lands in. The coin and the coin tosser are each subject to necessity.

[Mcdoodle]

McDoodle, I ran across this article and thought of you. http://lesswrong.com/lw/oj/probability_is_in_the_mind/ You may find this an interesting read.

Thanks

I'm interested to know how you stand in the discussion you quote. The conclusion of the linked article reads: 'That's what happens when you start thinking as if probabilities are in things, rather than probabilities being states of partial information about things. Probabilities express uncertainty, and it is only agents who can be uncertain. A blank map does not correspond to a blank territory. Ignorance is in the mind.'

I'm not clear if you're implying that there is somehow some 'certain' alternative based on causal determnism.

As I read this, I read the opposite: that it is only agents who can be uncertain *or* certain. There is nothing beyond partial information, a relationship between observer and events. I'm a Bayesian. I don't think probability inheres in events, but I don't think there is a better abstraction than probability to describe events, within this narrative. More broadly there are, as I see it, only narratives seen from different points of view, from which we constantly seek common ground to help our understanding.

In this context I read Belinda's 'necessity' as a Kantian view of some sort of world-in-itself which is not available to our apprehension or comprehension. (In this I feel the citation of a single coin toss doesn't clarify things: the object of this debate is one coin toss among many, the single toss as a member of a set of such events, then whether the set is in the mental image of the beholder or in the pattern of the events themselves.)

[RJG]

I'm interested to know how you stand in the discussion you quote.

Maybe I read through this too quickly. My initial take was that it confirmed my view, that probabilities is only a 'guessing-tool' to help understand reality, rather than (what I perceive you to be saying) that it is an essence of reality. Maybe I just read what my eyes wanted to see idk. Life is crazy busy for me the next few days. So it may be a few days before I can re-read and think upon this.

[XDredg3]

"I live in reality and I don't deny it exist in our mind. You believe what you see,hear,taste, and feel is real. I know that all those sentient response to vibrational signals are interpreted and not a true representation of ultimate reality, but a best quess stab at it, so we can function within it."

It exists outside of your mind as well. It will exists outside fo everyone's mind. If they wish to deny this, then they are denying reality. I believe what I see, hear, taste, and feel because these are the way we perceive the reality outside of us. They are signals of what is there. They are not a true respresentation in that, we have limits on what can see in nature. However, that is solved by our ability be rational and logical...to be able to think rationally, not in subjective whims. We perceive reality to it's fullest...Unfortunately, too many fail to interpret it correctly...I blame Subjectivism and Religion.

This shall be my last response on this...unless you make me grrish >;o

What about schizophrenics? They see, hear, taste, feel and hell even smell things we do not. So which one is really reality?

I know I'm a little late.