Determinism & Free Will

nymph
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Determinism & Free Will Apr 29, 2018 3:21:08 GMT -5 by nymph

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Post by nymph on Apr 29, 2018 3:21:08 GMT -5

[7:52 PM] Phibious: I do have this idea that there has essentially never been a solid physical argument for or against full determinism and people generally choose based on which one they want.
[7:54 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): There can be no full determinism
[7:54 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): It's a lil of both
[7:55 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): Would you say you are soft determinist Tea
[7:55 PM] Phibious: What is soft determinist?
[7:56 PM] TBerg | NiFe-Ti (III-): I find a lot of debates over determinism vs free will to be pretty semantical
[7:56 PM] Phibious: ^^ How so?
[7:57 PM] TBerg | NiFe-Ti (III-): Because they very much depend on what people’s understanding or assertion of what those things actually are
[7:57 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): I think free will can exist in an larger deterministic framework
[7:57 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): Same as how I see chaos and order
[7:57 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): But my overall structure is orderly and determined ngl
[7:57 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): I just like it that way
[7:58 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): It’s prettier
[7:58 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): William James is a soft determinist Phibs
[8:00 PM] TBerg | NiFe-Ti (III-): If the universe is constituted in such a way as to give you the consciousness to carry out a certain action, is it free will?
[8:01 PM] Phibious: I consider compatibilism not really any different from strict determinism.

I think less about determinism vs free will, and more about determinism vs randomness.

Actually, if you assume an absolute stance on free will, and you investigated it physically,
the source of free will would just look like a random event generator.(edited)
[8:01 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): There is in constrained free will
[8:01 PM] TBerg | NiFe-Ti (III-): That’s one level of “causation”
[8:01 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): It's more like... wiggle room
[8:01 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): Humans have a need to feel their Je
[8:01 PM] TBerg | NiFe-Ti (III-): The other level of causation is whether you experienced the choice of what you were doing
[8:02 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): But we also need our Ji virtues, which, as you mentioned, only exist under conditions of constraint. Je too actually
[8:02 PM] TBerg | NiFe-Ti (III-): Which exists in pretty much every action unless you step back from it
[8:02 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): K lemme digest what you're saying
[8:03 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): Yes Jelle I see chaos and order. Ebbing and flowing. Diverting and coalescing
[8:03 PM] TBerg | NiFe-Ti (III-): I just think that it depends on what level we are addressing
[8:03 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): I don’t see any reason chaos and order can’t coexist but the thing is that statement itself is about a certain order of things
[8:04 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): I can’t get away from the orderliness
[8:04 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): Oh they certainly do
[8:04 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): Not all is ordered
[8:04 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): So I say my universe is orderly
[8:04 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): Ordered to be unordered lol
[8:05 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): That just seems more sensible than saying “NO ITS ALL FAKE”
[8:05 PM] Phibious: how do you define chaos and order though?
[8:05 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): Phibs what's compatibalism?
[8:05 PM] Phibious: Blending determinism with free will by redefining free will.
8:06 PM] Phibious: Is it like, there is an orderly system but some parts of it are complicated and hard to predict, therefore it's quasi-chaotic?
[8:07 PM] Phibious: Does that count as chaos?
[8:07 PM] Ozzy | NeTi: there i deleted my offensive joke
[8:07 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): Right
[8:07 PM] TBerg | NiFe-Ti (III-): Chaos means its significance cannot be predicted(edited)
[8:07 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): Yeah that’s essentially it
[8:07 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): I like that
[8:08 PM] Phibious: okay, chaos as in 'chaos theory'
[8:08 PM] Phibious: that is actually extremely orderly btw
[8:08 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): That's why I dislike "What something is"
[8:08 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): Because we may need multiple terms
[8:08 PM] Phibious: fair
[8:09 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): To describe different phenomena(edited)
[8:09 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): Language is fuzzy
[8:09 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): So we have to be specific and define terms
[8:10 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): Defining terms is saying what is
[8:10 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): This is related to your post about Putnam
[8:11 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): everything context and no form doesn’t work either, Putnam would say
[8:12 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): It's saying what is, but to me it multiplies terms
[8:12 PM] iso-jellyskelly | TiSe (II-I): Multiplies definitions?
[8:13 PM] HangryBish (Ne Δ): Becauase we have to acknowledge that when we say "Chaos is..." we are actually talking about different phenomena, all which are quite real
[8:13 PM] Phibious: right right
[8:13 PM] Phibious: I was specifically trying to figure that out.

(more discord posts missing... but this was part of the start of the discussion)

Kahawa Full Member Posts: 247 Type: TiNe	Determinism & Free Will May 3, 2018 0:42:35 GMT -5 by Kahawa Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Kahawa on May 3, 2018 0:42:35 GMT -5 Can there be any event for which there was no necessitating prior cause? Can even a thought be 'free'?

Pine
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Posts: 31

Type: FiNe

Determinism & Free Will Jun 26, 2018 6:12:32 GMT -5 by Pine Alerith, Kahawa, and 1 more like this

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Post by Pine on Jun 26, 2018 6:12:32 GMT -5

Hmmm. I really don’t see the logical coherence in philosophies such as ”soft determinism”. The interpretation of compatibilism as ”a world ordered to be unordered” implies determinism. Hence, it’s not actually compatibilism. It would describe a world that is deterministic in its essence, but with the illusion of chaos/free will.

Obviously, we perceive both continuity and free will (ok, that statement can be nuanced. The experience of depersonalization, for example, makes it more complicated). But only one of those can be primary, right? While the secondary force must be considered illusory. Either free will is the root energy which constitutes the illusion of rules, or determinism gives rise to the illusion of free will. Pick one. Or none (a third quality is probably impossible to conceptualize, but hey, I guess I can’t exclude the possibility). But not both (at least I can’t come up with a solid model of explanation for true dualism).

Free will is by the way so damn difficult to define, as definition is dependent on separation of objects, attributes and causations. Free will is the lack of those.
Can one differentiate "free will" from "a random event generator"? Perhaps "free will" specifically is tied to consciousness / a sentient subject (or rather; is synonymous with one).

Indeterminism would imply a world that theoretically could inverse however, whenever. Every point in the universe would be equally potent in the act of causality.

Kahawa
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Determinism & Free Will Jul 1, 2018 0:33:26 GMT -5 by Kahawa via Tapatalk Pine likes this

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Post by Kahawa on Jul 1, 2018 0:33:26 GMT -5

IMO, the opposite of determinism is not freedom, but chaos and madness, and disconnectedness. 'Free-will', IMO, is magical thinking, and functions for us like a god of the gaps theory - the more you analyse free choice as it appears neuroscientifically, the more it shrinks to areas that we don't yet understand.

For example: "God painted a beautiful sunrise this morning" only 'makes sense' until we analyse what actually goes in to making a sunrise, and a magical intelligent causal agent is not necessary for anything that we know about sunrises (or making babies, or bringing rain, or growing crops, etc).

Free-will is similar. The more we analyse a 'choice', the more we discover determined external circumstances combining with determined internal brain and chemical processes. I think 'split-brain' studies are a good example of why 'one person' isn't really one person, and can't really have one executive free-will processing centre. You'd have to postulate a magical soul, separate from the natural world, but there are so many problems with that (including the duality of choice apparent in split-brain subjects).

I think Vultology itself (esp the twin study, if valid) is yet another aspect of the free-will god of the gaps problem. We're genetically hard wired for type. Was I (TiNe) 'free' to become a motivational speaker, or yogi mystic? I think those who would say yes are like those who would argue that the sunrise could have been different this morning if god hadn't intervened, but god made it beautiful. No matter how much grit and determination (that I may or may not have been born with) will make me an NBA center.

I think free-will is an illusion, an emergent property of complex brain activity. Causes causing effects, causing effects, causing effects.

(And quantum mechanics, if true and properly interpreted, doesn't imply freedom, but madness! Rolling a dice is not freedom...)

Pine
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Posts: 31

Type: FiNe

Determinism & Free Will Jul 2, 2018 6:18:09 GMT -5 by Pine Hrafn and Kahawa like this

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Post by Pine on Jul 2, 2018 6:18:09 GMT -5

You believe this because you have already assumed that perception and preference are products of non-sentient patterns or materials. You describe external phenomenons as if they were different from you; as if they were above your consciousness in the hierarchy of cause and effect.

Indeterminism requires that the root cause is non-causal and paradoxically driven. We're legitimately wondering: how can anything move and transform without some kind of principles; without a restriction of some sort? This is the tricky part of indeterminism. We must assume that the fundamental energy is sentient. That free will is precisely what it feels like: a pure, boundless force. It is just as insane as assuming that causality is what it feels like. At least from my perspective.

There are no logical irregularities in your hypothesis. However, I don't see any indications of determinism being more probable than indeterminism. I believe it's a question of consensus: humans have overvalued (ie: concentrated their consciousness onto) certain aspects of life, thus created a language and a scientific narrative which paints out the world as something compartmentalized; a myriad of entities placed differently in time and space.

In fact, I believe that the mind in itself works like a razor. Our organs of perception reflect the universe's goal to integrate itself by defining – crystallizing – itself. It Language and narration serve this strategy. The same principle applies to psychological alchemy, interpersonal merging, overcoming cognitive dissonance, etc.

As you can see, I strongly believe the scissions in the individual and collective psyche, to be fractals in this wholeness.

Maybe I can clarify how a consciousness can have will/preference without being differentiated / bound to a system other than itself. My take on the problem was to firstly seeing that existence requires definition. (I don't think that I can further elaborate that statement any better than you can't explain how it could not not be the case.)

Dimension 0 is the starting point. The pure, endless potential that everything consists of. The free will.
This subject looks at itself for definition, as it's existence requires it. Consciousness is then divided into two points. The energy can't fully define itself without defining it's every possibility. A cascade of dividing and connecting takes place.

Now, don't fall for the alluring narrative of linearity. This whole journey of definition has already taken place, because existence precedes definition. Yet, we're inside the process.

Last Edit: Jul 5, 2018 3:08:29 GMT -5 by Pine

Pine Member Posts: 31 Type: FiNe	Determinism & Free Will Jul 2, 2018 6:23:53 GMT -5 by Pine Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Pine on Jul 2, 2018 6:23:53 GMT -5 My indeterminism looks very deterministic...

Kahawa Full Member Posts: 247 Type: TiNe	Determinism & Free Will Jul 3, 2018 21:40:29 GMT -5 by Kahawa via Tapatalk Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Kahawa on Jul 3, 2018 21:40:29 GMT -5 Jul 2, 2018 6:23:53 GMT -5 Pine said: My indeterminism looks very deterministic... Hmmm.... Maybe you are Ni after all. 🤔

Pine Member Posts: 31 Type: FiNe	Determinism & Free Will Jul 4, 2018 4:53:56 GMT -5 by Pine via mobile Kahawa likes this Quote Select Post Deselect Post Link to Post Member Give Gift Back to Top Post by Pine on Jul 4, 2018 4:53:56 GMT -5 Kahawa I guess I'm just a weird-ass FiNe.

Gomux
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Determinism & Free Will Jul 4, 2018 18:16:38 GMT -5 by Gomux Hrafn likes this

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Post by Gomux on Jul 4, 2018 18:16:38 GMT -5

Suppose I find a type of plant cell that glows in the dark. I can't just explain it with "well, I guess it's just an emergent property, folks, chemistry can just do random extra stuff when it gets complicated enough." To even loosely explain I'd have to zoom in to the particulars and show how some process in the plant cell is generating light. Of course, we already *have* parts of chemistry that involve the creation of light from chemical processes at a nuts-and-bolts level, so it's reasonable to expect that the plant cell is using something like that. But if we didn't have any light-creating reactions in our knowledge of chemistry that cell would look a lot weirder. It would suggest that our knowledge of chemistry or some other area was incorrect or incomplete. It would be a signal that we'd missed something and needed at absolute minimum some minor changes to our system of understanding.

What I want to drive home is that 'emergent properties' cannot be used to explain results fundamentally outside the ruleset of a given system, these sorts of results demand a modification to that system. If you see that happening in any other context than mind-brain issues, you'll intuitively recognize it as unhelpful:

I can't look at a radio and tell you that the music is an emergent property of the transistors, I have to tell you about electromagnetism.
I can't just say an airplane flies because flying is an emergent property of mechanical parts, I have to tell you about aerodynamics.
But saying that mental stuff is an emergent property of the brain comes along with absolutely no proposal for a connective principle other than waving our hands and saying
"Eye of newt and pumpkin rind, POOF, emergence of the mind!"

(Don't jump to brain scans, injuries, or other observed correlations, because that does not provide a mechanism. The state of the music correlates to the state of the radio, and the airplane's flying ability correlates to the state of its parts, but these correlations don't make 'emergence' a good explanation.)

Now, it's still possible that the brain causally generates the mind, but this requires an additional rule explicitly added to our description of the universe:
Brain Rule: "Certain very specific configurations of matter directly cause mental events."
If some version of this rule isn't real, than no amount of emergence can fill that gap because there simply is no connective mechanism otherwise.

I don't have any hard objection to this rule, it seems very possible.
However, it does have a very odd consequence:

Physical brains are products of evolution, i.e. they are optimized for survival/reproduction in a specific niche of a specific environment.
Physical brains, under the Brain Rule, also match the exact sort of material configuration needed to generate mental events.
It's not likely that the result of a highly specific optimization process also just happens to match the highly specific requirements for generating mental events for no reason.
Therefore, it's likely that the capacity to generate mental events is an evolutionary advantage. This can really only be the case if the capacity for mental events causes you to have a greater number of healthy grandchildren. But this is a physical criterion. Mental events are then having a physical effect.

So, if physical events cause mental events, then either:
1. Mental events reciprocally affect physical events.
2. We assume a gigantic coincidence of very complicated and unrelated processes.

I think the idea of physical events fully causing mental events and mental events just hanging limply off the side of the universe like a wet rag is the result of a premature leap to Complete Explanation of Everything. It rests on presupposing a certain partial model of reality and shoehorning the existence of minds in after the fact without modifying anything.

Last Edit: Jul 4, 2018 18:18:41 GMT -5 by Gomux

Pine
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Posts: 31

Type: FiNe

Determinism & Free Will Jul 5, 2018 3:43:09 GMT -5 by Pine

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Post by Pine on Jul 5, 2018 3:43:09 GMT -5

I agree, Gomux.

Science has evolved out of axioms (without presumptions, we can't say anything about the world) that are confining the truth. I wouldn't say that it's untrue that: physicality has agency; separation of object or location exists; linear or clathrate causality is a thing... But these truths are tiny parts of the whole truth, and we won't ever reach the world outside those axioms if we continue to explore the world through them.

Septimus Rosa Chalier
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Determinism & Free Will Jul 26, 2018 17:36:16 GMT -5 by Septimus Rosa Chalier

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Post by Septimus Rosa Chalier on Jul 26, 2018 17:36:16 GMT -5

Interesting topic !

Pine, maybe determinism and pure randomness (acausality) are not so incompatible if you consider the possibility of the two forming a basic "duality" (you mentioned it briefly): two "systems" (or more accurately a system and its opposite) intertwined, generating a bigger "complex" (a whole but not a unity), with two fundamental rules overlapping. Causality and acausality, like weft and warp in a (dynamic) tapestry, would be woven together, forming the texture of our universe, making room for both free-will and determinism. In this case, I guess we should make the assumption that there is a "flexible determinism" (distinct from the "soft determinism" which is, as you mentioned, more or less the illusion of free-will), with an "adaptive mechanism" which would be partially disrupted by pure acausality and would tend to regain its orderliness but would never reach an "inertial" stability owing to the constant dynamic of readjustment. The deterministic part of the tapestry would try to absorb the (randomness) "shock" and deal with it according to its own intrinsic rules (trying to maintain the strings’ tension and its overall cohesion), and I guess the irregularities, the vibrating outline of this heterogeneous netting, would not be visible on a macroscopic scale. Could this sketch withstand the "contradiction" (illusion VS reality) and the reciprocal exclusion you pointed out? I don’t know…
Does it "hold water"? k2WV1Wt

By the way, I think human reason divides (defines limits) and connects (gathers and associates concepts to create bigger structures), essentially, in space and time (and excludes/includes, correlatively). In other words, it frames reality. Thus, it doesn’t allow us to imagine pure acausality (except as - quoting Phibious - a "random event generator", which is a deterministic perspective on acausality). Acausality can probably only be a negative concept for us (and our own limitations), by virtue of its fundamental lack of (and even anti-) structure (but maybe could we conceive the "feeling of free-will" as an internal manifestation of acausality?). In that regard, we could assume that acausality exists, but our brain translates or discards acausal "events", adapting to new circumstances by creating connections in real time (to incorporate new "random data" into the system). We would then live like one-eyed men, seeing only half of reality (and feeling internally the other half?).

That's just a crazy hypothesis, of course...

That said, it seems natural (at least reasonable) to believe that everything is causally determined. But I think - following earlier statements on compatibilism - that even if the world is entirely ruled by causality (and to make this kind of assertion we should probably assume - as you said earlier - that causality is not a purely human concept and exists outside of our own cognitive processes), if we stay in the field of human perception, then maybe randomness exists de facto (as "pragmatic randomness"). Because it seems legitimate to assume that our brain and technique will never be powerful enough to process all the potential and actual relations between objects in time, and we won’t ever be able to predict anything with 100% accuracy.

PS : apologies for my random english. I tried to do my best !

Kahawa
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Determinism & Free Will Sept 25, 2018 3:25:34 GMT -5 by Kahawa

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Post by Kahawa on Sept 25, 2018 3:25:34 GMT -5

@erijon3, I don't know if I'm more impressed with your candour, or that you typed all that out on your phone.

Yeah, nihilism... I've thought about that... but why does it lead to 'darkness'? Why not just to indifference? Is the 'darkness' response a reaction to something else, like when a being adapted to 'meaning' and 'light' discovers the Truth about the meaninglessness of reality, is the darkness that comes with that merely an overzealous pendulum shift? I don't even know if I'm making sense.....

Kahawa
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Determinism & Free Will Sept 25, 2018 7:55:41 GMT -5 by Kahawa via Tapatalk

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Post by Kahawa on Sept 25, 2018 7:55:41 GMT -5

Well, hang in there. At the very least, we're here because our ancestors wanted to survive, and we inherited those traits. We're not totally neutral when it comes to existence, otherwise we wouldn't be having these discussions.

Post by nymph on Apr 29, 2018 3:21:08 GMT -5

Post by Kahawa on May 3, 2018 0:42:35 GMT -5

Post by Pine on Jun 26, 2018 6:12:32 GMT -5

Post by Kahawa on Jul 1, 2018 0:33:26 GMT -5

Post by Pine on Jul 2, 2018 6:18:09 GMT -5

Post by Pine on Jul 2, 2018 6:23:53 GMT -5

Post by Kahawa on Jul 3, 2018 21:40:29 GMT -5

Post by Pine on Jul 4, 2018 4:53:56 GMT -5

Post by Gomux on Jul 4, 2018 18:16:38 GMT -5

Post by Pine on Jul 5, 2018 3:43:09 GMT -5

Post by Septimus Rosa Chalier on Jul 26, 2018 17:36:16 GMT -5

Post by Kahawa on Sept 25, 2018 3:25:34 GMT -5

Post by Kahawa on Sept 25, 2018 7:55:41 GMT -5

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