Talk:Free will and determinism

I was unable to add this to your Free will and determinism page. I suspect a total-page-length issue.

Although I like your arguments, and I agree with your conclusion, I submit a couple of observations.

Observation 1: If the universe follows the laws of determinism, it may well be determined that I believe the universe follows the laws of free will.
Observation 2: If the universe follows the laws of free will, it is allowed for me to believe the universe follows the laws of determinism.

Regardless of whether free-will or determinism is the way the universe works, it is clear that society does hold me accountable for my actions; does dish out praise and blame; does decide whether I am sufficiently sane to be held accountable. Even self-proclaimed determinists will hold me accountable for my decisions and my actions.

It therefore behooves us to behave as if we have free-will, and expect to be held accountable for our decisions and actions.

This leads one to socially approved decision making and therefore socially approved behavior regardless of one's free-will choice to believe in determinism. ;-)

Jesse Chisholm

behooves us to behave as if we have free-will

In a world in which you do not have free will, nothing behooves you because you have no choice about how to behave! There is little in moral guidelines to be drawn from the free will debate. If there is no free will, then all moral suggestions are irrelevant. So people's behavior in the determined world cannot be affected by this way, and your argument fails logically.

Thankfully, reality also demonstrates that your conclusion does not take place (there are so many people not following socially-approved behavior). It was funny though ;-). Generally, i have never understood the desire to deny the experience of choice. --JohnAbbe

I thought that the original page by Larry set out the various viewpoints very succinctly and clearly, but his conclusion that free will must exist was driven apparently by his pre-conceived notion of the need in our society for personal accountability, for the sake of justice. I hasten to agree that individuals need to be judged in that way, in order for our society to function properly. Whether or not free will exists, the criminal must be punished and held accountable for his actions. We must punish criminals fully, even in the knowledge that their ignorance led to the crime. If we cannot educate before the crime, we must punish afterwards. We must waste resources on ambulances to carry away victims, until we can learn how to teach people not to commit crimes. We must do it for the good of humanity.

I'm a determinist, and I think in this way: the amount of free will that we believe we have is in direct proportion to the amount of ignorance we have of all attendant circumstances and causes. Jesse's comments touched on that point. I agree with him that it behooves us to believe that we have free-will. It is our ignorance that behooves us, not our knowledge.

If a person, about to commit a crime for which he would ultimately be apprehended, was somehow made magically aware of the future, he would not commit the crime. He would be insane to do so. It is his ignorance that gives him the illusion of freedom. If it is a crime that you, or I, would not commit, it is only because our circumstances are different, and those circumstances include the information that our brains have received from our individual experiences that bias us not to commit the crime. It might be fear of apprehension, or conscience, or personal richness, or laziness, or lack of opportunity to commit that crime. Whatever it is, it limits us, and that is restriction, not freedom. Instead of asking ourselves how much freedom we have, we should turn the question around and ask ourselves how much limitation we have on the infinity of apparent possibilities awaiting us.

Larry mentioned science's claim about the uncertainties in nature at the sub-atomic level, as an argument against the determinists' claim to causative links everywhere. Yes, most physicists make that claim, but I was interested to read Prof. Stephen Hawking's comment about that, in his book "A Brief History of Time". I won't quote it verbatim, but his point was that one may well imagine some being that is outside the physical constraints of the universe, with the ability to examine all of the causal connections without affecting any of them by doing so, but such notions can only ever be speculation by us humans, and are not worth pursuing. He appears to make allowance for the possibility that, at a level unreachable by us humble humans, universal causative links might exist.

                                                          JWJM

Just great; another butchery of physics we can blame physics textbooks and popularizers for!

Actually, the situation is completely reversed. You need an infinite being in order to even talk about Indeterminism. (The case against indeterminism is even stronger than that: it's impossible for finite beings to even talk about unpredictability.) So indeterminism is:

almost universally rejected by theoretical fundamental physicists and cosmologists (the only physicists who matter on this issue) except for Hawking
not true
anti-scientific

To be technical about it, finite beings can't decide whether it's true or not, they have to assume it. But since it's incompatible with science we should assume it's false, and that determinism is true.

Further, Larry's formulation of determinism is screwed up.

Besides, indeterminism is incompatible with volition, so it can't rescue "free" will.

I have heard some statements to the effect that God has given humans free will. However, it is not necessary to assume free will to justify holding humans responsible for their actions. If none were held responsible for their actions, we would soon have chaos.

It is not necessary to believe in the existence of souls or free will in order to justify punishing people for breaking certain rules. If nothing else, the fear of punishment will (in many cases) lead people to not break the rule. And for those few who do break it, punishing them is important, as a way of setting an example for others.

--User:Juuitchan

what about the argument that even if we don't have free will, we can't know what we are determined to do, so we can safely act like we have it. this is similar to what was said about our ignorance being our free will but i was sure you were saying that in the context of society and behavior. is there a name for this "what are you gonna do about it anyway" argument? it is in direct contrast to the totally silly argument that "if we have no free will there is no point in trying". surely there is a huge fallacy in that kind of reasoning even if we have no free will. if you had a point in trying before you discovered you had no free will, then you should still after you discovered it: it is not that your will-freedom-state changed, but simply your awareness of it. (is it a universal law that once a being discovers he has no free will (if this is indeed the case) that said being invariably becomes fatalistic or hedonistic?) this sounds like a confusion with the issue of meaning/purpose to life (of which free will is in some ways a sub-issue). -Plasticlax

ps: why is an encyclopedia article coming to a conclusion about free will?

Looks like a nice essay. Can you think of a way to rework it so that the "I"s are removed? Articles aim to explain and discuss topics without being a presentation of the opinions or conclusions of any single editor. Cheers, -- Infrogmation

I think I've improved it some, though the tone is still wrong, full of "I" and such stuff. I redefined determinism, fixed (replaced) his burb on incompatibilism (most are determinists by the definition I gave), added a possible compatibilist arguement, and PNOVed the end some. I don't like Larrys arguement, but short of writing a paper criticising it, I'll let it be. I did, however, mess about with the quantum mechanics bit. And I certianly don't see how indeterimism demands a perfect being. If someone could exmplain this in more detail here (in talk), then I could do some more work on that part of the article. Oh, and I deleted the conclusion. It ends a bit abruptly now, but I feel it's an improvement. For clarity's sake, here's a quick note on where I stand: I'm an indeterminist who denies the possibility of free will whether determinism is true or not. And I think compatibilism is silly. ;-) -- General Wesc

It would be a lot easier to read if you would distill the argument to its essentials: Assume people must be responsible. Then they must have free will. Incompatibilists have proven that we don't ultimately have it. Words mean whatever we choose them to mean. We can redefine free will to be equivalent to responsibility. Voila! We have free will! Compatibility is a good thing. Incompatibility is bad. Everybody knows that. Case proven.

I'll get around to responding sometime soon. Fairandbalanced 06:10, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

But should this article be written in the first person? (Adrian)

I don't think so. It sounds unencyclopedic. I'm to lazy to rewrite the whole thing though. -- General Wesc 14:52, 26 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Redirected to the main free will article. The text was not much good, so I copied it here: See also Am I free or predetermined

I want to begin our discussion of free will and determinism by putting the problem in context. I am treating this problem, of free will and determinism, as though it were part of the philosophy of mind; and my reason for so doing is that our focus is on the will, or our ability to choose, and that ability is a mental process just as perception is a mental process.

For the sake of clarity, let me define a few terms for you, as usual, using an example. So suppose it is a Sunday morning and you are deciding what to do with the rest of the day. You reflect that you'd really like to see a new movie; but on the other hand it is a pretty nice day out, so maybe it would be better to drive to a lake and have a dinner picnic. So after weighing positives and negatives you decide to go on the picnic, because the movie can be seen anytime soon, but you much more rarely have the time or the nice weather to go on a picnic. And so you pack up the dinner and head out to the lake and have a great time.

Now, let's use this rather mundane example to illustrate what we mean by common terminology. The will is our ability to decide and choose among different options; it is a cognitive process. Another name for the same process is volition. As far as I can tell, "will" and "volition" have the same meaning. So we can say that you use your will or volition in deciding and choosing to go on the picnic. But "using" your will just means going through that mental process, however we might eventually describe it.

The word "choice" usually means the end result of a decision process. So to use our example, when after thinking about your options, you chose to go on the picnic. That act of choice was an important, perhaps the essential, part of your using your will or volition in that case. If you didn't make a choice, then you weren't using your will. But on the other hand, I don't think that using your will just involves making that final choice. The process you go through leading up to the choice is also properly considered the use of the will or volition. That process is called deciding or deliberating. So before you chose to go to the lake for the picnic, you were deciding, or deliberating. And deciding involves some manner of weighing options, even there are only two options to weigh -- as the song says, "Should I stay or should I go?" It is nonsense to speak of deciding between fewer than two options.

So much for the purely terminological points about the will. Now a little bit about the word "freedom." This word is highly ambiguous -- we can use it to mean political freedom, or freedom of the will, or simply the lack of something. As in the phrase, "sugar-free." And there are other senses, too, of course. But we are only interested in the sense in which the will is said to be free. Now if, as I said, the will is our ability to decide and choose among different options, then to say that the will is free is to say that our ability to decide and choose among different options is free. To speak of free will is to speak of that ability being free.

So our focus is on only that aspect of the will -- its freedom. And in particular we have two questions to ask: First, what is the freedom of the will? If we had to define "free will," what would we say? And second: Does freedom of the will exist? It does if we can freely decide and choose among different options; so can we?

But before we answer these two questions, I want to address a different question: Why is free will such an important topic? The answer is that it is freedom of the will that makes us morally responsible for what we do. If we had no free will, we could not be morally praised for anything, or blamed for anything. And correspondingly: if we can indeed be morally praised or blamed, then we do have free will. Unless we can decide and choose freely, then we do not really have the right to laud anyone for anything good they do, or condemn for anything evil they do: they weren't responsible for it. It would be like praising the sun for warming up the day, or censuring a tornado for destroying houses. Those things don't have free will, so what would the point be of praising or blaming them?

There is a related principle that philosophers use about a good deal. It is generally stated as "ought implies can." In other words, if I ought to do something, that implies that I can do it. After all, if I cannot do it at all, then surely I am not obligated to do it. What sense would there be in saying that I ought to do something that I can't do? If, for example, I see a child drowning in a rushing river and I can't swim, then can I be blamed if I don't jump in and try to save the child? I can't do it. So surely it's not the case that I should do it. Now let's see how free will works in here: if I don't have free will, then whatever I end up doing, I must do; I just don't have any choice in the matter. So then it's never the case that I should do anything other than what I happen to do. Doesn't matter what it is; if Jack murders an old woman, it's not as though he should not have done that. Because he had no choice; if he could have held off from killing her, then perhaps he should have. But his will was unfree. So he had to murder her, and we can't say that he ought not to have done so. Ought implies can. A moral obligation requires an ability to do the thing you're obligated to do; and an ability to do the thing you're obligated to do requires that you are free to do it. If you're not free do otherwise, then you lack the ability to do what you'd be obligated to do; which means that you aren't obligated to do it.

So I hope this is enough for you to understand why the issue of whether or not we have free will is very important indeed. If we lack free will we might as well just give up the whole business of praise and blame that goes along with morality. Now perhaps some of you -- not many I suspect, but some of you -- are perfectly happy to get rid of this business of moral appraisal. But are you really quite sure this is the view you want to hold? I mean, should we never praise you for your accomplishments and good deeds, because you just had no free choice in the matter? Should we never blame and reproach and revile criminals when they steal, rape, and murder, because they had no choice but to commit their crimes? If you reflect a little like that I'm sure that the vast majority of you will come to the view that moral evaluation has a very useful function in everyday life. We should not just do away with it. But the only way we can take moral evaluation seriously is if we believe we have free will. So do we have free will?

Now do you see how I just immediately slipped into asking whether we have free will, without asking what it would mean to say that the will is free? That's the way that most people proceed. I think this is a great mistake. I think we really do have to know what free will would be, before we could know whether we have it. But it will be instructive for us to ignore what we know we should do first, and instead just forge right on ahead, and see whether we can say we have free will, without knowing what free will is.

A. Determinism.

Determinism is the view that every event has a set of causes sufficient to explain why it and not some other event occurred. That is, every event is causally determined.

It is frequently held that determinism of this sort implies there is no free will. The argument for this goes as follows:

1. Every event has a set of causes sufficient to explain why it and not some other event occurred. That is, determinism is true.

2. Every act of choosing is an event (a mental event).

3. Thus every act of choosing is causally determined.

4. If an act of choosing is causally determined, then it is not free.

5. Therefore, no act of choosing is free. That is, free will does not exist.

Is you take the above argument to be correct than you are taking the position of incompatibilism, although an incompatibilism only insists upon premise (4). Incompatibilism is basically the doctrine that determinism is incompatible with free will.

Let me define the term incompatibilism determinism as the view that the above argument is correct. In other words, here's the definition:

Incompatibilism Determinism is the doctrine that free will does not exist, because every event, including every act of choosing, is causally determined.

As unappealing to most people as the conclusion might appear, this argument seems extremely solid; each premise is, by itself, very hard to deny. So let's go premise-by-premise now.

Premise (1): "Every event has a set of causes sufficient to explain why it and not some other event occurred. That is, determinism is true." It is worth noting at this time that "the Principle of Causality" states that "Every event has a cause." Well, if you accept that principle, it seems you must accept premise (1). But there is a difference between saying that every event has a cause and that every event is causally determined. This last statement is stronger. So what reason is there to believe that stronger claim, that every event is causally determined?

It's difficult to give a positive argument for this premise. The best I think I can do is to point to some examples where we assume it, or presuppose it. We definitely presuppose it in science -- or most of science anyway. For example, suppose you want to explain why an eight ball rolled into a pocket. Definitely we require some explanation. So suppose we say it was hit by the cue ball. But that only explains why the eight ball is moving. There are still aspects of the eight ball's movement that are unexplained: for example, its direction. That is explained by the vector and spin of the cue ball when it hits the eight ball. And so on -- we demand explanations for every aspect of the eight ball's movement. That's the basic premise of scientific inquiry: that there is a causal explanation to be found for every aspect of a thing's change.

If you believe in free will, you may want to say that there are exceptions to the Principle of Causality. We'll consider such a move in a moment. But first let's look at the other premises.

Premise (2) says: "Every act of choosing is an event (a mental event)." This is difficult, if not impossible, to reasonable deny. If to act is to do something, and events occur, you have to see is that all doings are occurrences. Which is just another way of saying that acts are a kind of event. Thus, let us accept premise (2).

What about premise (3) then? "Thus every act of choosing is causally determined." But this just follows deductively, and validly, from premises (1) and (2). If (1) and (2) are true, then (3) must be true. If every event is causally determined, and every act of choosing is an event, then it must be true that every act of choosing is causally determined. So the only way to reject (3) is to reject (1) or (2).

Now look at premise (4): "If an act of choosing is causally determined, then it is not free." This is one of the two premises, along with number (1), which has been attacked by people who don't want to accept the conclusion. But before criticizing it, let's see if we can't give some basic account of why it's at least plausible. We could put it like this: if I was determined by outside forces, by influences totally apart from me and my deliberations, to make my choice, then in sense it seems my choice was not really mine at all. It was not free because my whole process of deciding and choosing was just like another cog in a machine that produced my action. I did not play an active role in making the choice, precisely because every aspect of my choice was determined and previously decided by factors that were outside of me and totally beyond my control. Everything that led up to my ultimate choice was controlled by forces by me; so how on earth is it in the slightest possible that my choice was free?

So if we accept premise (4), after having accepted premise (3), the conclusion, that no act of choosing is free, follows deductively. There's no avoiding that conclusion if you accept (3) and (4). If our process of deciding and our choices are totally causally determined, then our decisions and choices may exist, but they aren't free -- we are the slaves of forces beyond our control. That, at least, is what the determinist says.

B. Libertarianism.

Now if you do not like the determinist's argument, and you believe we do have free will, then you have two options. You can reject either premise (1) or premise (4). Let's begin with premise (1), which is that every event is causally determined. So on the view that we're going to examine now, some events, at least, are not causally determined; in particular, events of willing are not determined; our decision processes and choices are not, not always, determined. At least sometimes when we choose to do something, the choice is free. The claim needn't be that our choices are always free; only that sometimes they are free. Think of it like this -- what if I flip out and you have to put me in a padded cell, and I very deliberately decide to pound my head on the walls. Then I doubt you would want to say that I have freely decided to pound my head on the walls. I'm in the grip of insanity. So my decisions aren't free, and I can't be blamed if I want to hurt myself or others. After all, that is why we have an insanity defense. So the point is that if you believe that free will exists, you don't have to say that every choice that everyone makes is free. You only have to maintain that some choices that we make are free. Having said that, let's introduce a definition:

Libertarianism is the view that free will exists, because some acts of choosing, are not causally determined.

The word "libertarianism" is ambiguous. It means, in the philosophy of mind, the doctrine that we have free will; but in political philosophy, it indicates strong support of individual liberties and a minimal amount of government in all spheres. These are two totally independent doctrines, and we obviously aren't going to talk about the political doctrine right now.

Libertarianism in the sense we're talking about it now includes two doctrines, the first that free will exists, and the second that some events (namely, some choices we make) are not causally determined. This second doctrine is called indeterminism. Indeterminism is simply the claim that not every event is causally determined.

In the past century or so, with the advent of quantum mechanics, the branch of physics dealing with probabilistic behabvior of subatomic particles, it has become rather common and popular to reject determinism. Now, in order to make out this criticism of determinism I'm going to have to give you another formulation of what determinism says. So here's the alternative formulation:

Determinism is (alternative definition) the doctrine that, given a complete description of the location and momentum of every particle in the universe at present, together with a complete description of the set of laws that guide those particles, a perfect being could predict with certainty every event that has happened and that will happen in the universe.

In other words, if you know where everything is, and exactly how it operates, then, if you could do all the necessary calculations, you'd be able to predict everything that happens. Everything would be predictable. And after the fact, everything would have its causal explanation. So you can see the relation between this definition and the earlier one given. Suppose I state the set of causes that is sufficient to explain why a given event has occurred, and not some other event. Well, that would be a complete description of the location and momentum of all the bodies that contributed to the event in question, together with a statement of the relevant causal laws. So I think we can take the two definitions of "determinism" to be pretty much equivalent; if one is true, then the other is true. They stand and fall together.

Now I'm going to give a criticism of the second definition of "determinism," which we can take as equally criticizing the first. One of the basic results of quantum mechanics is the following. Quantum particles act in a probabilistic way. That is, there are multiple states that could follow directly from another, and there is no way to predict which on will occur, only the probability of each possible outcome. Thus, quantum mechanics, if true, disproves determinism.

However, the most help that quantum mechanics might give to libertarianism is this: there are exceptions to the Principle of Causality, if we are to believe the physicists. So we might say: maybe free will is another exception to this allegedly general rule, that all events are causally determined. If it were an exception, it wouldn't be the only exception. So that's something at least. It makes the libertarian objection to determinism at least a little more plausible. So much for the libertarian's objection to determinism.

What can be said specifically against libertarianism itself? Let's suppose that, in fact, our choices are not determined at all. Now, what's the claim there? Apparently, it's that, when we choose, the event of choosing doesn't have a cause. A choice is a causeless event. Or at least, the causes that it does have don't determine the choice. There is still some aspect of the choice that is uncaused. Or perhaps you'd want to say that I am the cause of my choice; but then, to say that my choice is free, what I'd mean, as a libertarian, is that nothing causes me to choose what I do. So then there's an element of myself that is uncaused. So the libertarian view, that some acts of choosing are not determined, can be spelled out in various ways. Either a choice has no causes at all; or there are some aspects of the choice that are not caused; or though I entirely cause my choice, nonetheless there is something about myself that is uncaused.

Those are all different ways of understanding what it means to say that a choice is not determined. But something they have in common is that there is a randomness involved in my choice. After all, if your choice is in some sense uncaused, then to that extent what can it be but random? It's as though God rolls a die and whoops, there you go do something that has no causal explanation. So when you were choosing to go on the picnic instead of to the movies, what made that choice free was this random element. Total unpredictability: that's what made your choice free.

But doesn't that sound strange? Free will is supposed to be what accounts for why we are morally responsible for what we do. But now, if we're libertarians, we're saying that it's this random element of a choice that makes the choice free -- and which makes us morally responsible for the choice! But isn't that strange? Why should we be morally responsible for something that is totally random?

So let me explain the criticism of libertarianism here. Libertarianism says that a choice is free because it is not determined. And this means, as I said, that the choice is, to some extent, random. But if the choice is random, why should we be held responsible for making the choice? Freedom is supposed to be what makes us morally responsible; but why on earth would anyone say that it is causelessness, randomness, which makes us morally responsible?

I think that the problem here is in the libertarian notion of what free will is. Free will doesn't mean random or causeless will. Well then what is free will? Remember that we started out by saying that we should have begun by examining what free will is. I think I have made my point now. Perhaps if we had started out by asking what free will is, then we wouldn't have gotten into this confusion. So let's ask what free will is.

At the same time we ask this question, we are going to be examining premise number (4), which is: "If an act of choosing is causally determined, then it is not free." Maybe a choice can be determined and free at the same time. Don't just assume that that's a contradiction, before you have figured out what "free will" means. Maybe when we learn what free will is, we will see that premise (4) is wrong. Maybe once we have fixed on the right notion of free will, we won't think that free will is incompatible with the will's being determined.

C. Compatibilism and the definition of "free will."

In fact, we may as well now define a third position about free will and determinism, which combines elements of determinism and libertarianism:

Compatibilism is the view that free will exists, and that acts of choosing are causally determined. That is, while incompatibilism says free will and determinism are incompatible, compatibilism says just the opposite: that free will and determinism are compatible. So compatibilists reject premise (4) of the determinist's argument; just because an act of choosing is causally determined, that doesn't mean it's not free. It could still be free, even though it's determined. We simply need to have the correct conception of "free will."

So to support compatibilism, we will have to do as I said, and figure out once and for all what "free" does mean. Let's begin with a common formulation due to G. E. Moore. Moore said that to say one chooses freely is to say that one could have done otherwise. So if you freely choose to go on the picnic, you could have gone to the movies instead, or done something else entirely. If you freely chose to sign up for this course, that means you could have signed up for a different course, or for no course at all.

Now I don't think this conception of freedom is very helpful, because it's not clear enough. We could interpret "could have done otherwise" too many different ways. We can always ask: "could have" in what sense? In one way, even if I'm determined, I could have chosen otherwise; the very fact that I had other options itself means those other options were there before me, and I could have chosen them for all anybody knew. In another way, if I'm determined, I couldn't have chosen otherwise, because a choice that is totally determined would be a choice that I must make. So maybe it's true that, whenever we choose freely, we could have chosen otherwise; but this can't work as a definition, because it's just not clear.

So let's look at another definition: to choose freely is to choose without compulsion. This makes some sense; no one compelled you to go on a picnic; no one compelled you to take this course. So you chose freely. But now consider this problem: if I go insane, and you want to say I no longer have free will, it's not like there's any person who is compelling me to choose to things. At best you might say it's my insanity which compels me to make my choices. And in the same way, we want to say that little children can't be held responsible for everything they do; their wills are not fully free, not yet. But again, it's not any person who is compelling them to do what they do. It's just that a toddler can't go through a process of decision and choice that we'd want to call "free." If we have free will, we grow into it; so freedom has to be something that we can develop.

Still, there's something right about the proposal that a free choice is one that isn't compelled; in other words, the process of volition can't be constrained in certain ways, if it's going to be free. A free will is one that isn't being constrained in various ways: by force from other people; by insanity; by drugs; or even, in the case of a little child, by immaturity. But you can't just say that a free choice is one that is not compelled or constrained, period. Because that leaves open the question: What sorts of things can compel or constrain the will? Only some of those things make the will unfree. So here's the big question: What sorts of things, by constraining our ability to use our will, make the will unfree? One possibility is as follows:

One's choice is free iff it is the result of a decision process (whether a snap decision or a long deliberation procedure) which is not constrained by sufficient immaturity or impairment (as by insanity).

To understand this definition we need only see how it applies in various cases of free and unfree choices. When you chose to go to the lake, the reason that was a free choice, I'm saying, is that it was the result of your own decision process, and that process was sufficiently mature and unimpaired. On the other hand, when they lock me up in the asylum, and I have lost my free will, it's just because my decision process, my faculty of volition, is sufficiently impaired to make you all say that I lack free will. Or suppose that someone slips a dangerous drug into your morning coffee, and you decide that it would be a dandy idea to go out on High Street and play in traffic. Well in that case, you didn't freely choose to play in traffic, just because your ability to deliberate about what you are doing is impaired by the drug.

One problem with this definition is that this word "sufficient" is vague. How much impairment, and of what sorts, would be enough to make my choice unfree? If I've had a couple of beers, is that enough? Probably not. What if I am forced to drink a six-pack in a half an hour -- would that be enough? Probably. But there are going to be borderline cases, where we don't know whether we should say I have free will or not, according to this definition. Still I think that's okay, because the concept of free will is itself one that has borderline cases. In some cases, we can't say for sure whether or not someone choses freely or not. Think of someone who pleads insanity in a criminal trial. We say that if he knew the nature of his actions then he was insane; but in some cases it's just not perfectly clear whether a person knows the nature of his actions. We can't say whether his decision processes were sufficiently impaired by his insanity.

But my claim is that this definition does at least get this right, that the freedom of the will depends on whether our ability to deliberate is sufficiently mature and unimpaired. And if the word "sufficiently" is vague, which it is, then I will also claim that our concept of free will is vague in just the same way.

This definition of free will has an enormous advantage over the others that I gave. The advantage is that I can give a good argument for it. So let me give you this argument. Remember now that we are morally responsible for what we do because we have free will; unless we do in fact have free will, we can't be praised or condemned for what we do. So it's free will, if we have it, that makes us morally responsible beings.

Well in that case, we had better get a definition of "free will" that accounts for the fact that we're responsible. Just keep this in mind: if we're free, then we're responsible. So whatever freedom is, it has to be something that makes us responsible for what we do. The thing that makes us free has to be something that makes us praiseable and blameable, as it were.

In that light, look again at our definition of "free choice" given above: a free choice is the result of a decision process which is not constrained by sufficient immaturity or impairment. So let me ask you: on this account of freedom, is freedom something that makes us responsible for what we do? Is having a mature, unimpaired decision process what makes us responsible for what we do? I think so. If I am a rational adult, I can be praised and blamed for what I do; and the reason that I can is precisely that I am a rational adult. So, I think we can infer that free will is a will unimpaired by sufficient immaturity and impairment such as drug-induced states, or brainwashing, or insanity.

And if this is what free will is, then we can safely reject premise (4) of the determinist's argument. If an act of choosing is causally determined, then it could still be free; if I am a rational adult, with faculties unimpaired, then I'm free, regardless of whether there is a complete causal explanation for my choices.

Now just for the fun it look back at the definition of "free will" that the determinist and libertarian seem to agree on. They seem to agree that the will is free when it is uncaused or random. But honestly, is it the fact that it's uncaused or random that explains why rational adults are responsible for what they do? Of course not. It's the fact that they have a fully-functioning faculty of deliberation, which they could use, if they wanted to. We are not free and responsible beings because our will is uncaused; we are free and responsible beings because our will is operational and fully-functioning. So free will is compatible with determinism.

Another possible solution is simply saying that a choice is free if its cause was purely internal to the person making the choice. The determinist will quickly point out that the internal state of the decision-maker is itself caused by eternal effects, but the compatibilist may reply that that is relevant.

To support this second view, a compatibilist may point out that if you ask the man on the street to explain how they're "free" he will likely respond that he can do what he wants, that his actions are controlled by his own desires, beliefs, etc., not by any external factors. That one's desires, beliefs, etc. are caused by exterral factors seems unimportant tothe average person, so what people have meant all along when they spoke of free will was this compatibilist view.

--

Edit to point to Determinism rather Free-wiil

I re-pointed this discussion about "free will and determinism" to determinism, soley. It was previously pointed only to free will. Happy to discuss why this is important if it matters to anyone. Edunoramus (talk) 22:40, 6 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

Alright, I'll bite: Free will and Determinism aren't two different views that need to be equally presented. They aren't two different views at all. Determinism is the opposite of Indeterminism, and both, and others, are views on the concept of Free will. Therefore, this page should direct to Free will, which discusses determinism, indeterminism, and various forms of compatibilism and incompatiblism. Mous3kteer (talk) 00:01, 7 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Determinism is the opposite of Indeterminism? Huh? I see that the article says that but, that doesn't make it true. The article is simply wrong. Free-will and Determinism are irreconcilable concepts. Indeterminism is also known as the "false free will supposition", in other words just some stuff that Libertarians made up to support their free will argument in a roundabout way; AKA "nonsense-on-stilts". Nice try. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Edunoramus (talk • contribs) 01:28, 7 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
"Free-will and Determinism are irreconcilable concepts" in your own ideology; that's not a definitively agreed upon statement. In fact, that viewpoint is called "incompatibilism" and is discussed along with compatibilism (the opposite view, that they can coexist) in sections 2.1 - 2.2 of the Free will article. Those sections take up around a third of the article in total, which I think supports the idea that the redirect should go to the article that discusses both opposing viewpoints at length. I don't think making decisions based on a belief that one major branch of a philosophical discussion is "made up" is the best choice for an encyclopedia dedicated to impartiality. Mous3kteer (talk) 01:42, 7 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

I get it and, I am not sure what you hope to sort out? It is clear that none of this is provable or resolvable, I understand that. In fact, that's my point, so for you to suggest that I have an ideology with respect to the relationship of free will and determinism is not really on target. Am I demonstrating impartiality in suggesting that Free-will and Determinism are irreconcilable concepts? Yes, I am saying something that labels me as supporting incompatibilism in the Libertarian circles but, I don't care about resolving the differences. I don't think they are resolvable. That's not my agenda at all. You seem to agree with that in some respect and, I think this is a common argument in philosophical circles. In fact, I am curious what you believe-- are you telling me that free will is the correct assumption? Where do you stand? What do you care about? I can tell you what I care about. The agenda that brought me here is to ensure that these topics, namely the conversation we've been having on the disambiguation page for liberty. My interest is in ensuring that positive liberty is represented evenly, with NPOV. So, that's why I am aiming for disambiguation on liberty; there's a Libertarian agenda there that is being vigorously protected; it's not NPOV. Yes, you can break it down further by bringing in compatibilism and inccompatibilism arguments, in the same way, that I could bring arguments and questions about structure and agency. But, in the end, it doesn't matter, we're not going to solve anything. These ideas don't parse because they don't share the same ontological foundations. You will recall that we ended up here, because I repointed "free will and determinism" to determinism, not because I believe in Determinism but, rather because I asked the question, why does the link point solely to free will? Your suggestion seems to be that free will has a more comprehensive answer, I am not so sure that's the case. What I sense, so far, is strong ontology on behalf of Metaphysical Libertarianism. I may be wrong but, all I can see so far is people who care a great deal about Libertarian ideas, blocking and undoing my ability to make NPOV edits so, I can only assume that all of you care a great deal about protecting what I am trying to balance with an NPOV perspective. All you have to do is look up (from the top to the bottom) of this talk page to see how hopeless this conversation is; it's really just a big waste of time. I came here for a reason and, that reason is the one that I'm chasing down-- not some agenda to settle this one. Edunoramus (talk) 03:21, 7 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

I meant "ideology" in the broadest of ways, because of course you have an ideology with respect to these ideas, as I do, and as we all do. My particular view on the validity of any theory of free will I think, and hope, is irrelevant. My perspective and agreement with one side or another should not influence the way that those ideas are presented on this site. I can't speak for the others that may have been involved in this previously, but I can assure you that I, to the best of my knowledge, have no Libertarian agenda and simply want this site to be as beneficial as possible in explaining the topics at hand. In regards to your last sentence, to try to smooth our interaction on the personal level, I would like to point out that I have undone none of your edits, either here or elsewhere.

Having only caught some of your secondary edits to your most recent post after I wrote the following paragraph, I think I somewhat missed a point you were making, but I still think it's worth mentioning, so bear with me:

For this specific redirection, I think some confusion may be arising from what the Free will page is and is for, which was what my mention of compatibilism was intended to point out. It is not a page for the idea that we do have free will, as opposed to not. It's a page for the concept of free will in general, and includes multiple ideas on it, including variations on both Determinism and Indeterminism. It's the page that covers the overarching topic that I think someone arriving at a page entitled "Free will and Determinism" expects to find. Determinism is not that. It is a page dedicated to the specific philosophy of Determinism, which happens to briefly mention other contrasting ideas in passing. To me, if someone wants to read about and understand the debate on determinism/indeterminism, free will/no free will, then the Free will page is where they're trying to get to, and the redirect should assist them as such. To send them to the Determinism page is to insert a bias towards determinism, thus violating NPOV. You said you aren't convinced that the one is more comprehensive than the other, and I don't know of any way to convince you other than simply pointing again to sections 2.1 - 2.3 of Free will and asking for the equivalently comprehensive section of Determinism.

To the point I think you were actually making, I don't like using a change to this page as a pawn in the discussion of a different page's edits. Regardless of our opinions on the presentation of viewpoints elsewhere, you have proposed (and made in advance) a change in the redirection action of this page. I believe that change is detrimental for the reasons stated above, and I believe that edit, standalone, should be reverted. Mous3kteer (talk) 05:14, 7 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

I suggest that "Free will and determinism" should be its own page, as the argument on both sides can be briefly summarized.Edunoramus (talk) 22:46, 8 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

Draft page for new Free Will and Determinism Page

Free will and determinism

The debate over free will versus determinism hinges upon whether a person's actions are determined by past events and other factors or whether they are completely voluntary.

Free Will

Free will is the capacity of agents to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded. Free will is closely linked to the concepts of moral responsibility, praise, guilt, sin, and other judgments which apply only to actions that are freely chosen. It is also connected with the concepts of advice, persuasion, deliberation, and prohibition.

Whether free will exists, what it is, and the implications of whether it exists or not are some of the longest-running debates of philosophy and religion. Some conceive of free will as the right to act outside of external influences or wishes and claim that people do choose what they do.

The commonly held definition of free will focuses on the concept of having the ability to choose one's actions without external influences or interference. This definition, however, does not adequately define free will; instead, it focuses on it being a limiting or restricting condition on an alternate definition. That is, free will is not the ability to freely choose, but instead the negation of external influences or interference to one's choices.

Determinism

Determinism is contrasted to free will, both philosophically and in terms of popular perception. The philosophical debate between determinism and free will is a debate over whether our actions are caused by other causalities (events, systems, or structures), or whether we choose them, independently of any causal determinisms. Determinism is related to two other related beliefs: 1) The belief that all events, including thought, are caused by other causalities events, systems, or structures 2) The belief that human beings are no more than predictable products of deterministic forces.

Determinism claims, essentially, that "a body in motion cannot choose to change its path. Some popular perceptions include, "An agent with free will is an agent who chooses his/her actions independent of causal determinism.

Other related definitions

Latest comment: 2 years ago9 comments2 people in discussion

Since determinism is inconsistent with the idea that free will exists, determinism is sometimes considered to be in conflict with free will. As such, the definition claims free will is incompatible with determinism... this is incombatalism.

Compatibilism is the belief that free will is compatible with determinism; some compatibilists even hold that determinism is necessary for free will.

Indeterminism is the view that at least some events in the universe have no deterministic cause but occur randomly or by chance.

Soft determinism suggests that some behaviors are more constrained than others and that there is an element of free will in all behavior; there are philosophical arguments in support of soft determinism.

Hard determinism is the philosophical doctrine that everything that happens, including every action and every thought, is necessitated.

Determinism is sometimes confused with fatalism, the belief that everything is preordained as if destiny has already determined everything that happens. However, fatalism is a belief that some situations are inevitable and unavoidable, whereas determinism is the belief in causality, which says that events are a part of a causal chain.

Also to be defined: predeterminism, predictability, theological determinism, nondeterminism (randomness), hard incompatibilism, Logical determinism, causal determinsim, etc. etc.

Edunoramus (talk) 01:16, 9 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

"In light of no substantive argument as to why this points to free-will instead of determinism..." I have given a substantive reason. You have sidestepped it twice.

Also, I do get that this is only a draft, but I think almost all of it falls very close to WP:OR, because I don't think you can just state things like "Since determinism is inconsistent with the idea that free will exists" since that is very much up for debate. It's possible a "Some advocates of determinism claim it is inconsistent..." might work with a proper citation.

Regardless though, all of this is already covered on the Free will page, the entire existance of which is for this kind of information. Why not improve that page instead of resurrecting this 19-year-old essay-turned-redirect? Mous3kteer (talk) 23:42, 8 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

I'm offering you a path forward here. This is not WP:OR because it is not published. It is draft, in-process. Happy to collaborate on an article that has balance. I'm not interested in seeing anything turned into an agenda; the free will page has an agenda and, it is a mess. This "19-year-old essay" can have clarity and precision. Edunoramus Edunoramus (talk) 23:58, 8 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
If you believe the Free will page does not fairly and accurately describe the material it covers, then that's the page that any efforts to rewrite should go towards. Creating warring pages on the same topic with different views is not the way to make a coherent encyclopedia.

You have also once again sidestepped what issues you have with the Free will page other than vague claims of an "agenda". Why do you think the page with extensive material on this topic doesn't cover it sufficiently enough to merit the redirect? Mous3kteer (talk) 00:42, 9 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

I am not stepping into the epistemological minefield of "free will" with a crowd of true believers-- as the talk page warns, the subject is "controversial" and it holds content that "may be in dispute". Why is it that determinism is not so controversial and, why are changes on that page not immediately reversed but, when you edit the free will page, people are all over it? What's the agenda? What's at stake? Let's explain it all right here. My guess is that Metaphysical Libertarians are very passionate. The way determinism is explained, makes it sound like a dud argument that no one could possibly take up but, yet there are many that do. Why is that? Are they dumb? probably not, it's that the opposing definition does not do the arguments justice and, the true-believers prefer it that way. That's why I am here-- I understand how the world works. Edunoramus (talk) 01:08, 9 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
"when you edit the free will page, people are all over it?" I checked the last 10 years: unless you made them anonymously, you've never edited the free will page, or its talk page. You're assigning motives to a nebulous group of editors you've never interacted with. Even the box you referenced that mentions it's a controversial topic says, "Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them." It's easy to say that no one is listening to you when you don't speak. Please, if you have neutral edits that would improve the article, make them. Then see what the crowd of "true believers" that you have zero proof exists say about it. If it gets reverted, talk about it on the talk page. That's what it's there for.

Also, of course, edits to Free will would get more notice than edits to Determinism (which I think you've also never edited?): the page gets more traffic. If someone doesn't know anything about philosophy, they won't know the word "determinism" to go to its page; they'll go to the "free will" page, which also conveniently actually covers the topic in general. Mous3kteer (talk) 01:55, 9 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

Yes. I am not here to edit the free will page. The free will page is a mess. I don't have the energy to fix that. What I would like to fix, which I think is a more simple task, is to describe the argument on both sides between free will and determinism. I'd like to do that, in a clear way, that avoids all the epistemological wrangling that is apparent to me on the free will page. The free will page is the domain of people who are very passionate about free will. I think this is important for the cause of clarity and precision for people who are curious about the problem. One of the primary challenges is that "free will problem uses a taxonomy of positions that" causes "a great deal of confusion, partly logical but mostly linguistic."^[1] Edunoramus (talk) 12:02, 9 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
'The actual page for this topic is too bad to be fixed' is not a valid reason to make a new page. The Free will page is not the domain of any one group, it's the domain of anyone and everyone who can improve it. Including you. Wikipedia is built on incremental changes. WP:YFA#Search_for_an_existing_article (I feel like there's a better place it's mentioned, but I'll have to find it later) clearly says that the first step before creating a new article is making sure a page for the topic doesn't already exist. Whether you like the existing page or not, it exists, and therefore a second page on the topic should not be created. Imagine if everyone who didn't like a page just made a new one for different phrasing. The entire site would fall apart into warring factions with conflicting information. Mous3kteer (talk) 18:35, 9 February 2022 (UTC)Reply
Ah. Likewise, the free will and determinism page is not the domain of any one group; There's no faction-- just you and I."Teamwork makes the dream work." Edunoramus (talk) 19:38, 9 February 2022 (UTC)Reply

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