i)
Introduction
ii)
Complexity
iii)
"You could have done otherwise!"
iv)
Predicting One's Own Actions
v)
Quantum Stuff
vi)
Turing Machines
vii)
Politics and Morality
We
may as well not try to define the words “free will” because, as
someone once put it, “that's an argument that never ends”. In
other words, it would take up this entire piece... and more.
Here
we'll refrain from offering an alternative definition and simply
question what other people say on this subject. In that simple
respect, definitions don't matter. With a definition, people can
still make mistakes in what they say about free will, chaos,
indeterminism, choice, etc.
Though,
of course, if there were an agreed upon definition of the words “free
will”, many problems may be solved. The problem is that there isn't
one and perhaps there couldn't be one. After all, the words
“free will” aren't like the word “cat” or “house”:
they're closer to a word like “truth” or even “wrong”.
Complexity
There
are many newfangled defenses of free will.
For
example, it's said that complexity can explain free will in certain
respects. Chaos or quantum non-determinism have also come into the
debate in recent decades.
The
argument is that complexity is required to have a developed brain.
And large brains are required for free will. Such complexity gives a
“system” (or a person) the ability to make choices.
Does
all that guarantee free will?
I
can't see how complexity in and of itself can give us free
will. It does in the sense that if we can't decipher all the causal
antecedents of our actions, then perhaps we must be free. On the
other hand, it may not matter one bit whether or not we know all the
causal antecedents of our actions – they may still determine our
actions. After all, couldn't a simple being – or even a machine –
perform an action?
I
can accept that brains are complex. Everyone does. I just don't know
how complexity alone gives us free will.
And
I don't see how you can squeeze free will out of chaos or
indeterminism (do they mean probability?) either.
“You
could have done otherwise!”
How
does the possibility that Mr X “could have done otherwise”
give him free will? Like complexity, how does free choice
spring from such indeterminism (if that's what it is)?
How
does the possibility - or even the actuality - of making a different
promise, for example, free us from determinism? That's because
choice x is fully causally determined. And the
choice not to do x is also fully
causally determined. The reason why x, rather than not-x,
is chosen, will be a fully causal reason (as well as vice versa).
You
can now say that if you could have
made decision not to do x, that's
all that matters. In other words, that choice itself determines
the freedom of the will; regardless of the fact that both x and
not-x are
fully causally determined. (That's the “common-sense position”.)
Predicting
One's Own Actions
What
about self-prediction? If you can't predict your own actions, then
aren't your actions chaotic and uncontrolled?
Can
an agent's own measurements of his own body or brain/mind states help
the matter?
Isn't
it impossible for an agent to measure everything that leads to one of
his actions or decisions? That would seem to point away from free
will. Though other people appear to argue that it's a position in
support of free will. What such people argue is that this person (or
“system”) not being able to measure small “deviations in the
initial conditions” works towards his free will, rather than
against it?
What
about other people failing to predict our actions?
Does that give us free will?
Why
would that matter? I couldn't predict the actions of a machine or
robot; though that wouldn't give it free will. And even computer
programmers sometimes – or many times - can't predict the
calculations or actions of their computers.
Even
if someone can't predict an adult human being, that doesn't guarantee
free will. I may not be able to predict a robot or computer's
actions. In fact I won't be able to unless I've programmed it myself
and even then (see the Turing machine section) that can't be
guaranteed.
Quantum
Stuff
Human
beings can be seen as deterministic
systems whose random inputs (or the things which happen
indeterministically) don't have a noticeable impact on the system –
or on how they behave at the “macro scale”. In other words, when
you interact with a human being, his quantum nature may appear
irrelevant to his general behaviour (at least in observational
terms).
What
would a “randomised input into a deterministic machine” give us
anyway? Not free will. What would it give a machine?
Slight
deviations in a system don't seem to guarantee that a system is
chaotic
or indeterministic either. These deviations happen to the
system/person. The system can still be deterministic. However, if you
factor in quantum
indeterminacy, it's still an open case whether or not such
a thing guarantees free will. I think the argument can go in the
opposite direction. Either that, or quantum phenomena are largely
irrelevant at the level of the cognitive (or even sub-cognitive)
systems of the brain. What I mean is that even though the brain is a
“quantum system” (at bottom, everything is!), that may not impact
on the issue of free will (as such).
Turing
Machines
The
following may help with the earlier talk about introducing something
random into a system.
It's
not being said here that a Turing
machine has free will in anything like the sense a human
being may have free will. It's a parallel case cited
to try and help explain the nature of randomness as it's used in the
free will debate. Alan
Turing, for one, didn't see what he said - or did - in
terms of free will. (He used the word “intuition”; though,
admittedly, that can be said to amount to the same - or to a similar
– thing.)
In
other words, this isn't a general point about Turing machines and
their ability to appear as persons or replicate human behaviour. It's
not a point about the Turing
test. It's
a point about Turing machines.
Think
here of early Turing machines and the requirement for them to be able
to follow their own rules or show what some people called
“initiative”. It was
said that a programmer could engineer an element of randomness into
the computer (or into the programme). That was what was Alan Turing
tried to do with his “Manchester
computer”. That seems to have meant that such randomness
(as it were) would bring about “intuition”
(or initiative) in the Turing machine – or even free will!
In
any case, when (not if)
a random element is introduced into a Turing machine (a computer),
and then that computer manages to follow rules not laid down by the
programmer (and as a result it solves its own problems), then there's
no “appearance” about it. In this limited respect, it is free
from its programmer. Or it has a “will” which is independent of
the humans who created it; as well as of its programmers. This isn't
to say that it has either a mind or a (free) will in the human sense;
though the independence (or even freedom) is certainly real.
A
Turing machine “could have done something else” with the same
input. That is, the same random change (mentioned by Turing) to the
Turning machine can have different results in terms of what it
produces (say, a different calculation or even a different
action).... What am I talking about!? These things already happen
already with computers (or their programmes).
Politics
& Morality
Some
people believe [free will] to be a “political concept”. Then
again, perhaps it's always been a political - or at least a moral -
concept. And it might well have been (in some cases at least) that
issues in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind might have been
needed to provide the groundwork (as it were) for the political or
moral positions on free will.
Sure,
over large time-periods, philosophy has had an influence on these
issues. Though the minutia rarely does. This discussion, for example,
has been more or less besides the point when it comes to the
day-to-day political and moral issues of free will.
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