Yet another freedom of choice thread

What is "free" choise? Does it mean completely independent from any external causes? So if we were hypothetically copy-paste a universe and revert a new version back in time to the moment prior to that of someone making a choice (provided the new copy is completely identical to the original cos it's like the whole point duh) and then hit the play-button what would we get as a result? There are 2 variants of what would happen: 1) the result will remain the same regardless of the amount of the attempts and all the copies of the universe will have a person making the same choice in them; 2) the result will be different in some instances of the universe; But if 2) was what we were getting it would mean that it is random. So a choice must be either random ( 2) ) or dependant on the laws of physics of the current universe ( 1) ) (in which case it would be determined by them and so not free by our definition of freedom). Now imagine ourselves to be an almost almighty being that can edit the universe however it pleases except creating new laws of physics: if 1) was the case then it would mean that a person's will is completely in our hands, we can edit the universe in a way that will prompt a person to make a choice we want, but in the opposite case the person's choice would be the only thing that is out of our control, because it would be independent from our ability to perfectly arrange all the other variables in the universe.

Compatibilist Lain reporting in. The fact that our present state determines our future state is exactly the condition of having free will. If my actions don't depend on my thoughts and the past experiences that prompted those thoughts, how could they be "my" actions? The situation is almost exactly inverse to what most people assume it to be: a deterministic universe is necessary for free will to exist.

>>77198 But that doesn't make sense does it? How can it be free when it's determined by the laws of physics and not independent from them? You are merely a marionette doomed to act in a certain way from the start, because atoms in your brain were arranged in a certain way before your very birth and the absolute entirety of the the processes that lead to the moment of you making a "choice" (prentices since I don't think at that point it can be called that) can be calculated and emulated if we were to have a complete information about the universe's behaviour

>>77202 >How can it be free when it's determined by the laws of physics and not independent from them? My question is, how could it be free if it *wasn't* determined by the laws of physics? I think that what it means for my will to be free is that my actions to follow from my thoughts, and my thoughts to follow from the perception of the world through my senses. My decisions come from the physical sense-data I experience and the physical make-up of my body because *those are what I am made of*. If I could just will something spontaneously without ever thinking about it, or if I could think something without receiving some information from the world that informs and in fact drives my thoughts, in what sense would this be "my" will? I had no part in it, it did not come from the experience of my life nor did it emerge from my body. It is much more like the situation you described, of being a "marionette" to something else. Something that has no free will is either something that is dead, or something which is physically incapable of effecting its will somehow (like a person experiencing sleep paralysis).

Just dropping in to let you all know that the odds are good that hard determinism is dead. Human brains very likely sample quantum "noise" in a meaningful fashion*, so nothing you do is ever strictly (hard) determined**. *Weird membrane dynamics are sensitive to this, also check out lithium spin state stuff **At least, until somebody magics up a way to prove that quantum noise is determined. AFAIK this isn't happening prior to the death of our species.

>>77207 Quantum physics predicts pure randomness. That doesn't necessarily mean nondeterminism.

>>77207 maybe it is determined by your* choices ;^} *I mean my ;^}}

As the poster above has noted, the freedom itself is to be contained within something. The you that's recognised in a dialectical relationship with the other is perceived as being both free and not free precisely due to the fact that it's a phenomenon of such a relationship: with the "free" you-within-you being "captured" by the other and thus made unfree. So, for as long as existence is phenomenological, I can't see how it's possible to be a truly free agent. If it's the worldly issues, such as morality or ethics, that you you're concerned about, I wouldn't bother much and just act whatever, 'cause it seems to me like there's just no alternative.

>>77194 The truth is that it is simply not that meaningful or impactful of a question. People in the west autistically fixate over it for entirely stupid reasons.

>>77208 Neat point, please elaborate? Only path forward I can see is that small-scale randomness aggregates into large-scale deterministic behavior (ala brownian motion). But this seems like a bold assumption.

On a very basic level we all are familiar with a certain understanding of "free will", namely the ability to act on our desires without the impediment of some external force. The question of "does free will exist" in this sense admits no uncontextualized answer; it is something that one has in some situations and lacks in others. I lack free will, for example, when at work I am forced by the boss to do something that—had I not been under the threat of termination—I would have objected to. Similarly, I have free will if I am working on something of my own accord, without having been coerced financially or otherwise. This ordinary understanding of "free will" that we all share is quite nuanced and sophisticated. For example, in an educational setting I may be forced to learn something against my free will which, upon learning it, I become interested enough to continue of my own free will even without my educator's coercion. There's really a lot that can be done with this ordinary understanding of "free will"; it's a quite beautiful term. This may all seem like a fairly obvious and trivial take. I bring it up because it stands in contrast to the all too common practice these days of wrenching words from their contexts and 'nounifying' them; "free will" becomes something akin to Mongolia, apple pie, or dark matter—a place or object or substance that can (or is hypothesized to, in the case of dark matter) have real presence in the world—as opposed to a linguistic tool for signifying control (or lack thereof) over our actions. Now that "free will" is hypothesized to have physical existence, a pointless search begins in an attempt to discover the origins or necessary conditions for such existence or nonexistence. All of this mystification can be said to stem from a misunderstanding of the ordinary way we use the words "free will"; the resulting debate on its existence/nonexistence serves to clarify nothing, tarnishing both the beauty and utility of our original understanding of the term.

>>77229 I'll preface this by saying I'm nowhere near an expert on quantum mechanics. So, determinism means that there is some set of variables -- possibly including unobservable "hidden" variables -- that fully determine the future from the past. Locality means that only a particle's immediate surroundings in time and space can influence it, in other words, all data about hidden variables comes from some field in which information cannot travel faster than light. In quantum mechanics, it is possible to run experiments that show that determinism and locality are mutually exclusive. No experiment has yet proved locality or determinism to be true or false. Randomness is different from nondeterminism. If I flip a coin, the result is completely determined by the initial conditions. Essentially something is "random" if you don't know what it is; for instance, a tiny perturbation in the initial conditions of the coin-flipping problem will result in a substantially different outcome. If I don't know what the perturbation of the original system is, the best I can give you is a probability distribution - 50-50 - for the outcome given a random perturbation.

>>77240 I also know not very much QM anymore. From my (brief, uninformed) reading, I got the impression that: 1) Discovery of QM-randomness (and/or information-limits) prompted "hidden variables" to keep locality alive (as in, provide a deterministic explanation to patch the apparently undetermined nature of certain QM things). 2. Bell test(s) so far show that locality+hidden variables are almost certainly NOT the "real world" mechanism. 3) The strongest remaining arguments for hard determinism rely on subverting Bell test somehow e.g: - superdeterminism ( I prefer GIGAdeterminism) where you claim that the choice of experimental settings was predetermined (it is supposed to be random every time) in such a way that biases you towards observing violation of locality - some weird multiverse thing i don't understand - other misc. loopholes that are all closed now I think I guess the strongest argument (which I think you are also making) is that you cannot know whether a system is determined from inside the system. Anything that looks random can just be unaccounted-for determinedness. >randomness vs nondeterminism This is true and good to point out. I meant randomness as in true-randomness (by which I meant a particular subset of non-determined behaviors). Should've been more clear. >77233 This is a fun take. I would redirect by saying: >I lack free will, for example, when at work I am >forced by the boss to do something that—had I not >been under the threat of termination—I would have objected to. Why do you lack free will here? Surely you still possess the physical capacity to object. Being unwilling to choose something doesn't make you unable to choose it, does it? Note that you can say: >If a big strong guy grabs my hand and forces me to hit myself with it, > then I lack free will because I cannot stop hitting myself. This seems like a much sturdier statement. You might say in response, that your boss threatening to fire you is just as 'forceful' as a big strong guy grabbing your hand and smacking you with it. But the natural response is to say, "Well, then what ISN'T forceful? Isn't EVERYTHING forcing you to choose each and every thing you choose to do? Weren't you forced into that job because of the school you went to and didn't your parents or your lack of money force you into that school and didn't X force Y and so on..." I'm not a determinist, but I think the issues with free will arise fairly naturally from any discussion of the "natural understanding of it"- no wrenching required. >>77210 I think I get what you mean but can you give me more words to enhance clarity?

>>77275 I agree with you wholeheartedly that—in your way of using the term "free will"—I would not lack free will unless I was under physical coercion. It is quite clear to me that if we choose to understand "free will" in this way, then in the example I brought up where I was 'forced' to work, I would still be doing it of my own free will, since my boss was not directly physically coercing me. In essence, what we have done here is shown that there are at least two ways of using the term "free will": 1 - freedom to act on one's desires without coercion (my original formulation) 2 - freedom to act on one's desires without direct physical coercion (the formulation in your response) We may then ask the following question: which way of using the term "free will" is correct? Here, though—at least for me—there is some ambiguity in the use of the word "correct". One way of making sense of the use of "correct" is to ask the following question instead: which of the two above ways of using "free will" is more common? This is a loosely-formulated scientific question that would require, perhaps, conducting surveys among a representative sample of some population in order to determine whether or not (1) or (2) or maybe some other way is the way that people tend to use "free will" in their lives. It is not a question that can be put to rest in a discussion on some online forum or imageboard, and I would not here claim that I have enough knowledge ahead of time to conclude that "free will"(1) is 'correct' in this sense (or "free will"(2), for that matter). A different way of using the word "correct" would be to ask this question instead: given a specific understanding of "free will", is a given usage of that term compatible with that understanding? I think this may be what you are getting at with your response. You say, for example, > Surely you still possess the physical capacity to object. Being unwilling to choose something doesn't make you unable to choose it, does it? Here you are making the (correct) claim that this example is compatible with "free will"(2) but not with "free will"(1). I think it would be wrong to suggest, however, that this is an argument against "free will"(1) itself. "free will"(1) and "free will"(2) are definitions, and definitions cannot be true or false, we can simply choose to adopt them or drop them as the situation requires. Here I am not concerned to prove that my formulation is the 'correct' one. I think both make at least a little bit of sense sometimes and are applicable in different situations. The point I really want to make here is that there is no shared content between discussions of (1) and (2). Despite the fact that we are using the same words—"free will"—we mean completely different things by them. This is partially what I was trying to get at with my discussion of "wrenching words from their contexts". It's tempting to believe that we are discussing one thing, "Free Will", but when we examine closer how we are actually using words, it turns out that we are doing completely different things.