Determinism/Free Will

[vulcanlogician]

I think it is safe to say that we are both in agreement that the physical laws of the cosmos are fixed. The properties of matter/energy that are exhibited in varying states and conditions and configurations do not change or fluctuate.

I think it is safe to say that we both agree that at the quantum level, particle motion, although constrained within certain physical parameters, a particles position at any instant cannot be predicted, it's motion random, and all one can do is describe the particles motion in statistical or probabilistic terms.

The question now seems to be, to what extent does the randomness of QM affect what would logically be a fully deterministic cosmos if only fixed physical laws held sway. That QM has some affect, and you concede that "(because of scientific evidence) that the universe isn't entirely deterministic", I suggest our conclusion should be that the cosmos is not deterministic, that Determinism is not true, rather, the cosmos is indeterministic or probabilistic, and therefore some form of Indeterminism.

You want to make a distinction between between what *must* happen and that which is truly random. I would argue that your perception of what *must* occur is an illusion caused by restricting observations to a narrow time interval and the interaction of a limited set of elements.

My position doesn't depend on the fact that deterministic events happen in the universe. But the point is, they do. Bringing up the deterministic way in which matter behaves is a good way of showing (in principle) that we human beings --aka. objects made of matter-- cannot have free will. Every molecule in our brain and body does what it does because of prior states and events. Even a quantum wave function begins with particles in a particular range of position, traveling at a speed that is also expressed in a range.

Sure, there is some fundamental ambiguity in all events. Who can tell exactly what protons of the side of the barn will be struck by the particular protons of the baseball? No one. But we can be pretty certain that the ball (if thrown at the side of a barn from three feet away) will not suddenly change course, fly out into space, and whip around Jupiter before returning to the throwers hand. How do we know this won't happen? Because matter must obey the laws of nature. Every neuron that fires in the brain does so because the laws of nature say that "a neuron in this physical situation will fire." There may be some quantum variance in there, and occasionally, this may significantly impact macroscopic events. But that doesn't mean the ball can do otherwise than hit the side of the barn. In a very realistic set of probability calculations, you can say that it almost always will like 99.999 percent of the time.

How are we humans different from the baseball at a fundamental level? How can our bodies and brains do otherwise than what their smallest components physically do?

When we zoom out and look at large systems, all the infinitesimally small variations of possible outcomes begin to add up over time. I think global weather patterns are a good example of how this ever present randomness plays out on a large scale. In weather forecasting, we can only speak of probabilities, with any accuracy declining the further into the future one tries to forecast.

If we are in agreement that the physical world is indeterministic, then this sets the environment in which our Central Nervous System operates, and it would be in that framework that we would explore how the CNS functions and how that functioning affects, influences, or determines volition.

Yes. There is room for variation in events. But we still have all our work ahead of us to get from there to free will.

The CNS is incredibly complicated. But does that make it a force unto itself? If so, how? If the nervous system behaves the way it does mostly due to prior states and events, where does our "will" become free from all that and start making decisions about how nature will operate?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Chaos theory is not a purely Newtonian science, it is somewhere between Newtonian and QM.

It isn't. At all.

What I'm saying is that the only source of randomness that finds expression in the physical world is QM. I'm differentiating that kind of randomness from the other kinds. Like rolling dice... it appears random to us, but is strictly determined by Newtonian laws.

It isn't. Classical laws can yield approximately correct predictions, but as the there are no classical systems dice aren't classical and neither is anything else.

True that if you trace the causal chain back far enough you may see influence from quantum effects, but my larger point was there are causal chains to begin with. Not everything is random. Some wave functions have collapsed.

I’ve never really understood this emphasis on quantum randomness vs. classical determinism as it is supposed to pertain to e.g., free will or anything really metaphysically, philosophically, or more generally relevant outside of physics.

For conciseness and simplicity, one can think of classical determinism in terms of initial conditions and system evolution. Given a system we imagine to be governed by laws of classical physics, and given a precisely specified initial conditions in an idealized closed “universe” for it to evolve in time (i.e., the system is isolated), then the laws tell us that (granting certain mathematical assumptions) there exists a unique evolution that the system will follow.

Put even more simply, we can say the feature state of the physical system in isolation is determined by initial conditions + classical (deterministic) dynamics/classical laws.

However, no system is ever isolated. More importantly, in a truly “deterministic” universe it is meaningless to speak of initial conditions, because there is at most one. Any experimental attempt to determine physical laws via controlling conditions so that they approximate that of an isolated system in a manner that can be replicated involving equivalent systems under equivalent circumstances described in terms of initial conditions is a contradiction in terms. You can’t “reset” the clock in a deterministic universe, but that’s what we do in physics and in empirical science constantly. It’s essentially the entire foundation upon which empirical science rests.

Incidentally, its also why we often talk of superdeterminism in quantum foundations and similar fields. In classical physics, determinism is more or less a way to say that we have the free will or volition to freely set conditions such that we could have done otherwise and thus we can make statements about initial conditions due to the freedom of choice experimenters have. That’s what allows classical determinism. In quantum physics, in order to restore similar sorts of determinism we need much more. One possible for issues such as nonlocality or realism is to suppose a kind of determinism that doesn’t allow experimenters to have free choice. In other words, we could imagine that their choices to do such-an-such an experiment on this particular system in this particular way at this particular time were not actual choices but were themselves determined (hence superdeterminism). The problem with this solution is that it makes physics and scientific inquiry more generally impossible and inconsistent, because e.g., replication is nonsense, there are never any initial conditions for any system, nothing can approximate isolation, and no inferences can be made from a particular experiment to anything more general because there was only ever a single outcome that experimenters “believed” to be in some sense determined by their false sense of freedom of (experimental) choice.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

It seems you don't see the fundamental randomness of chaos. All events have a slight indeterminism based in the quantum realm (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle). This usually has nothing to do with macro physics but when you iterate events (like multiple swings of a double pendulum), the uncertainties add up to a level where quantum randomness is visible in the macro world.

This is completely false. First, iterated systems that are "chaotic" are irrelevant here as they can only ever be course grained models with an underlying dynamics requiring continuity if they are to model physical phenomena; you're conflating a class of "chaotic" phenomena modeled using discrete rules with more generally chaotic systems, and physically chaotic systems are involve nonlinearities, not iterative "chaos".
The chaotic pendulum and associated systems are good examples. They are not governed by iterative rules but by differential equations that evolve continuously in time, and NOTHING about this kind of chaos can EVER result from iterations. It is ENTIRELY a phenomena due to the nonlinearities in the laws of classical physics.
Second, quantum physics is linear, also has nothing to do with the chaotic systems governed by iterative rules, and is connected to experiments by postulating the failure of the deterministic formulation of quantum mechanics (the measurement problem, more or less). But is is an issue of the indeterminate nature of physical systems in QM and the intrinsically statistical nature of the theory, not of chaos theory (either discrete or continuous)

Finally, it’s not just the fact that small variations or fluctuations in initial conditions can lead to drastically different evolutions for a given system, at least not when it comes to issues relating fundamental physics and foundational questions such as the nature of determinism, the structure of physical theories, free will, volition, etc.

Most physical theories and equations governing the dynamics of “chaotic” systems rely on the continuum, which (for the purposes of simplicity) one can think of as the real number line, or 3D space when “space” is treated as ℝ3 or ℝ x ℝ x ℝ (just think of functions from basic algebra like y=mx+b, but in 3D space). This is not an ideal or unnecessary but convenient assumption. It is a massive, incredibly problematic assumption that is nonetheless required in order for even basic statements about basic physical laws to hold at all or even make sense (e.g., that there exist trajectories which can obey physical laws or that it even makes sense to represent physical systems and their behavior via our mathematical representations of these systems and/or of physical laws governing them).

The problem is that the real numbers and any generalization into 2D or n-dimensional space require that almost every “coordinate”, value, or physically meaningful number in general be almost always and almost everywhere irrational. Put simply, assuming the mathematics necessary to apply basic physical laws from Newton or QM or GR or whatever means assuming that “infinitesimal” is nowhere near enough. The rational numbers provide us with a more exact, precise basis for any measurements of space, spacetime, or physically significant values than we could hope for empirically. But almost no numbers are rational numbers in the reals (they are negligible). Rather, almost all numbers are irrational, but irrational number require infinite information.

Practically speaking, the first ramification is that almost all physically relevant values as well as the more fundamental models for space(time), physical units, etc., almost always take values that we can never observe. Simplistically, physical theories assert that, for example, a body with a particular mass (which takes values in ℝ) traverses some path in continuous space over a continuous interval of time, and that all the values, measurements, and relevant information about any such system should correspond (with probability 1) to values/coordinates/etc. that cannot, even in principle, ever be measured.

So why assume this enormous amount of structure? Because basic theorems from calculus (and therefore as well as in addition in PDEs, differentiable calculus on manifolds, most function spaces used in applications and to represent physical systems, etc.) require the continuum or more, and fail if restricted to the rationals.

The end result is that we have deterministic laws that depend upon mathematical structures we have invented in order to render these laws into deterministic equations (not to mention the spaces the physical systems “live” in). The determinism fails completely if we relax conditions even just enough to allow for infinite precision and infinitesimal variations.

 

[MikeF]

But that doesn't mean the ball can do otherwise than hit the side of the barn. In a very realistic set of probability calculations, you can say that it almost always will like 99.999 percent of the time.

And yet, in the real world, it is a probability.

So, today a found a ball in my house and I threw it against one of the interior walls. In your Deterministic system, when was that event determined? Was it determined at the big bang? Was it determined when life began on earth? Was it determined to occur the moment I was born? When in time was the specific ball I used and the wall upon which it was thrown determined? Could any of these conditions been changed before completion of the event?

I still say this notion of determinism is an illusion and it is more accurate to speak in terms of an indeterminate/probabilistic cosmos.

I recently read the book "Sapiens" by Yuval Noah Harari, and in it he speaks about the psychological phenomenon of hindsight bias or "creeping determinism" and its affect on historians. I think it may play a role in our perceptions here as well.

My position doesn't depend on the fact that deterministic events happen in the universe. But the point is, they do. Bringing up the deterministic way in which matter behaves is a good way of showing (in principle) that we human beings --aka. objects made of matter-- cannot have free will.

Under determinism there would be no volition at all, simply the appearance of volition, wouldn't you agree? If the universe is a clockwork that once set in motion will inexorably play out in a fashion determined by initial conditions and physical laws, and we as physical parts of that clockwork can do no more than respond in a physically determined way, then there in no volition, free or otherwise.

How are we humans different from the baseball at a fundamental level? How can our bodies and brains do otherwise than what their smallest components physically do?

That is what is to be determined, what we need to figure out. As you have indicated elsewhere, you agree that we human beings (perhaps other species as well) have volition. That we do behave differently than a rock or a baseball is not in question, in my view.

Yes. There is room for variation in events. But we still have all our work ahead of us to get from there to free will.
The CNS is incredibly complicated. But does that make it a force unto itself? If so, how? If the nervous system behaves the way it does mostly due to prior states and events, where does our "will" become free from all that and start making decisions about how nature will operate?

I think we must acknowledge a unique characteristic of matter/energy. I assume that matter/energy is all the same stuff, and at the highest energy level and uniform density, it would appear to be uniformly energy and absent matter, exhibiting a limited set of "behaviors" (properties) under those conditions. However, as this matter/energy expands and cools, matter begins to precipitate out into fundamental particles. These particles accumulate in such a way as to create distinct kinds of elemental matter such that each kind of matter exhibits a different collection behaviors from the other types under the same conditions. For example, a carbon atom exhibits different behaviors than a lead atom under the same environmental conditions. If there are no carbon atoms in the cosmos, then the set of behaviors of carbon atoms do not exist in the cosmos, yet potentially can. These elements can further combine in a variety of ways that then add new sets of behaviors that did not previously exist until these combinations were formed.

I think you begin to see the idea here. We do not know all the ways in which different types of matter can be combined and the resulting behaviors that might be created that are not currently being expressed. So it is not that the CNS is a force unto itself, rather, it is a combination and association of elements that creates a unique behavior, or value-added properties, from that combination/association of elements. This unique structure can imagine future states that do not exist and make choices that bring that imagined state into reality. I would suggest that creating nuclear reactors to produce electricity is an excellent example of our making decisions about how nature will operate. Wouldn't you agree?

I have speculated that it is the abstraction of thought and our ability to store and retrieve memories that allow us to be more than a rock or a simple organism reacting to external stimuli, and I imagine at some future point we will have it all figured out. Until then, it seems clear to me that volition is occurring and that the volition exhibited is not purely deterministic. The CNS is complicated, as you stated, and the CNS certainly has some pre-programed responses to external events, and yet there are structures that permit us to both override those pre-programmed behaviors and think of, or imagine things that do not yet exist and which no prior cause would necessitate that idea or thoughts formation.

The last point is to reiterate that, to my mind, the answers to these questions will be resolved through scientific inquiry as opposed to philosophical inquiry.

 

[vulcanlogician]

I’ve never really understood this emphasis on quantum randomness vs. classical determinism as it is supposed to pertain to e.g., free will or anything really metaphysically, philosophically, or more generally relevant outside of physics.

Agreed.

As for classical physics and qm, they don't really come to bear on the issue of free will in the sense that one or the other theories answer the question of free will. But they are worth investigating (imo) because it's important to understand that the universe is causally closed. Once we discuss things and come to an understanding of what exactly we mean by "causally closed," then we can move into the next issue (the metaphysics of it) "Can we have free will in a causally closed universe?"

Mike and I were having more of a careful discussion about the issue where we can resolve distinctions along the way. It's also kind of a debate in the sense that I'm defending hard incompatibilism and he's putting forth challenges to that view. Physics and determinism are as good a starting point as any for such a discussion. I don't think it's wise to carry on a debate by dismissing physics at the outset. By examining, scrutinizing, and understanding some basic claims physics, we will (probably) arrive at the conclusion that the universe is causally closed. Once that's done, we can properly delve into the metaphysics.

In classical physics, determinism is more or less a way to say that we have the free will or volition to freely set conditions such that we could have done otherwise and thus we can make statements about initial conditions due to the freedom of choice experimenters have.

I either disagree with (or misunderstand) this sentence. Would you mind clarifying?

 

[vulcanlogician]

Under determinism there would be no volition at all, simply the appearance of volition, wouldn't you agree? If the universe is a clockwork that once set in motion will inexorably play out in a fashion determined by initial conditions and physical laws, and we as physical parts of that clockwork can do no more than respond in a physically determined way, then there in no volition, free or otherwise.

You could insert a Cartesian soul into the equation (or something like it). Kant spoke of a "noumenal self" that was responsible for the choice-making in our lives (which is not necessarily a soul... but it IS something that does not behave according to prior or natural causes). I reject both of those entities' existence. To me, "choice making" or "volition" takes place in the brain. The brain is a physical object. The brain does what it does because it is a clump of matter that exists in certain conditions and is 100% subject to the laws of nature.

If you zoom in on any part of the brain you will see molecules behaving according to physics and chemistry. When I choose a beer out of the fridge, a neuroscientist could tell you everything involved in what we call "the choice" that I made. A neuroscientist could explain what parts of the brain were active when I considered saving the good beer for my guests. The neuroscientist could tell you what parts of my brain were active when I was imagining what one beer tasted like compared to the other, and the neuroscientist could tell you parts of the brain were responsible for making my deciding whichever beer I ended up taking.

Let's zoom in on one of those parts of the brain. What we'd see is a completely deterministic system. My body changes outside stimuli into electrical impulses in the brain. This causes the production of certain neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters cascade into further electrical activity. This results in impulses being sent to my arm and hand which cause me to reach out and grab "beer A"... consequently leaving "beer B" in the fridge.

THAT is what we call a "choice." We also call it "will" or "volition." But there isn't anything happening in the brain that we are in control of or responsible for. We are responding to stimuli. And we cannot do otherwise. There is no little part of the brain that "acts on its own." It's a chunk of circuitry that behaves as such. If we zoom in far enough in any segment of the brain we will see molecules bouncing around and acting according to parameters recognized by physicists and chemists.

I think you begin to see the idea here. We do not know all the ways in which different types of matter can be combined and the resulting behaviors that might be created that are not currently being expressed. So it is not that the CNS is a force unto itself, rather, it is a combination and association of elements that creates a unique behavior, or value-added properties, from that combination/association of elements. This unique structure can imagine future states that do not exist and make choices that bring that imagined state into reality. I would suggest that creating nuclear reactors to produce electricity is an excellent example of our making decisions about how nature will operate. Wouldn't you agree?

I do agree with you. That IS what happens with the brain.

But, to me, there isn't any room for free will in all that. You can program a computer to do the same thing (ie. create something wholly new). It's because of its "unique structure" that the brain operates the way that it does. It's often "creative," "willful," and a whole host of other adjectives that suggest it is a free agent. But according to the view I'm defending, the brain can't make free choice.

Now, there is a theory called "compatibilism" that doesn't make such stringent requirements as I do for there to be free will. According to the compatibilist, if the neurological system (or person) is able to operate without inhibition, we may as well call it free. And (according to that view) humans -and other animals- DO have free will. But, as I mentioned before, I reject that theory because I agree with the consequence argument-- the one that said "Nothing we can do now can change the past.")

Even though I reject compatibilism, it does make some decent points. One thing they like to point out is that we already make distinctions between free and unfree in life. If I'm tied to a chair, for instance, I'm not free to move around. What we call, freedom, is merely the non-restriction of our organism. And so long as our organism could potentially move in more than one way, they call that freedom, and they conclude that (generally speaking) the will is free.

So, today a found a ball in my house and I threw it against one of the interior walls. In your Deterministic system, when was that event determined? Was it determined at the big bang? Was it determined when life began on earth? Was it determined to occur the moment I was born? When in time was the specific ball I used and the wall upon which it was thrown determined? Could any of these conditions been changed before completion of the event?

It was determined at the big bang (or before). Unless there is some event that happened independently of the big bang, nothing could interfere with that. QM does involve wave functions in the matter... ie presents possible quantum events that would lead to you not throwing the ball. But, as is evidenced by you throwing the ball, that wave function collapsed into a universe where you threw the ball. The causal chain traces all the way back to the big bang.

That is what is to be determined, what we need to figure out. As you have indicated elsewhere, you agree that we human beings (perhaps other species as well) have volition. That we do behave differently than a rock or a baseball is not in question, in my view.

Agreed. A human being (or a brain) behaves differently than a rock or a baseball. They are different objects with different physical and chemical properties.

 

[Heyo]

To me, "choice making" or "volition" takes place in the brain. The brain is a physical object. The brain does what it does because it is a clump of matter that exists in certain conditions and is 100% subject to the laws of nature.

If you zoom in on any part of the brain you will see molecules behaving according to physics and chemistry. When I choose a beer out of the fridge, a neuroscientist could tell you everything involved in what we call "the choice" that I made. A neuroscientist could explain what parts of the brain were active when I considered saving the good beer for my guests. The neuroscientist could tell you what parts of my brain were active when I was imagining what one beer tasted like compared to the other, and the neuroscientist could tell you parts of the brain were responsible for making my deciding whichever beer I ended up taking.

I do agree with you that we don't have free will. I think that is the most important part.
What happens in the brain on the molecular level is either deterministic or random but there is no freedom. (Thus our disagreement about determinism of the world isn't important.)

But that is a reductionist view. "If you zoom in ..." But what happens if you zoom out? At the level of thoughts and behaviour, we see something that resembles freedom. It is an emergent property. I call it "free choice" and I think we have it, though we don't have "free will".

 

[MikeF]

It was determined at the big bang (or before). Unless there is some event that happened independently of the big bang, nothing could interfere with that. QM does involve wave functions in the matter... ie presents possible quantum events that would lead to you not throwing the ball. But, as is evidenced by you throwing the ball, that wave function collapsed into a universe where you threw the ball. The causal chain traces all the way back to the big bang.

Yeah, I'm going to have to strongly disagree with this. Yes, every event has causes, however, causes do constrain the future to a single course. The whole notion that I as an individual was destined to be formed from the Big Bang just does not fit, in my view, with how the cosmos appears to function, which we must both admit, we and humanity are still quite ignorant about on the whole. The idea that the specific egg and the specific sperm that formed me, each one of millions was not a probabilistic event does not seem reasonable. I think twin studies are another good example that demonstrates probability over determinism. We can start with identical DNA and yet have two people who's morphology is quite similar, yet is not identical, nor is their behavior/personality identical. The same DNA resulted in two unique individuals.

My ball against the wall experiment did not exist until I formed the idea and there was no guarantee that such an idea would form. Once formed, the probabilities began to form as to which ball and which wall would eventually play a role in the experiment. Many possible events could have interrupted or postponed the process, including finding a ball to begin with. Once the ball was found, probabilities for the candidate wall would form, I would imagine in the first instant, it would be highest for the closest walls. After a moment of thought, I chose to use a wall one flight up, which then immediately changed the probabilities for all the candidate walls.

The probabilistic cosmos seems to fit better with our observation/experience. Your view of causal determinism seems more in line with the Laplace Demon though experiment. There seem to be several refutations to this view of the cosmos.

You could insert a Cartesian soul into the equation (or something like it). Kant spoke of a "noumenal self" that was responsible for the choice-making in our lives (which is not necessarily a soul... but it IS something that does not behave according to prior or natural causes). I reject both of those entities' existence. To me, "choice making" or "volition" takes place in the brain. The brain is a physical object. The brain does what it does because it is a clump of matter that exists in certain conditions and is 100% subject to the laws of nature.
If you zoom in on any part of the brain you will see molecules behaving according to physics and chemistry. When I choose a beer out of the fridge, a neuroscientist could tell you everything involved in what we call "the choice" that I made. A neuroscientist could explain what parts of the brain were active when I considered saving the good beer for my guests. The neuroscientist could tell you what parts of my brain were active when I was imagining what one beer tasted like compared to the other, and the neuroscientist could tell you parts of the brain were responsible for making my deciding whichever beer I ended up taking.
Let's zoom in on one of those parts of the brain. What we'd see is a completely deterministic system. My body changes outside stimuli into electrical impulses in the brain. This causes the production of certain neurotransmitters. These neurotransmitters cascade into further electrical activity. This results in impulses being sent to my arm and hand which cause me to reach out and grab "beer A"... consequently leaving "beer B" in the fridge.
THAT is what we call a "choice." We also call it "will" or "volition." But there isn't anything happening in the brain that we are in control of or responsible for. We are responding to stimuli. And we cannot do otherwise. There is no little part of the brain that "acts on its own." It's a chunk of circuitry that behaves as such. If we zoom in far enough in any segment of the brain we will see molecules bouncing around and acting according to parameters recognized by physicists and chemists.

Let's be honest here. We still have only a rudimentary understanding of how our CNS does what it does. Even in your scenario above, you mention nerves (chunk of circuitry) and neurotransmitters, but what of the endocrine system and its effects on thought and behavior?

Can you say what the physical properties of 'fridge' is in the CNS? How are the physical properties of 'fridge' distinct from 'Beer A' and 'guest'? What are the physical rules of interaction for 'fridge', 'Beer A', and 'guest' such that their properties determine fixed and immutable outcomes?

We do not have a handle yet on all the complexity. I assure you it is not a simple stimulus of a sense organ igniting a nerve signal to the CNS resulting in some cascade of signals. There is most likely complex thresholding involved based on multiple signals, signals varying in timing and duration, such that whatever will result is not necessarily something that is inevitable and set in stone based on prior events. There can be variability of outcome. There is serendipity. There is the imagination of that which does not exist and can never exist. On top of all this are the effects of the endocrine system and hormones. The variablity of their release and duration throw further complexity into the mix, effecting mood, emotion, and ultimately behavior.

I do agree with you. That IS what happens with the brain.
But, to me, there isn't any room for free will in all that. You can program a computer to do the same thing (ie. create something wholly new). It's because of its "unique structure" that the brain operates the way that it does. It's often "creative," "willful," and a whole host of other adjectives that suggest it is a free agent. But according to the view I'm defending, the brain can't make free choice.
Now, there is a theory called "compatibilism" that doesn't make such stringent requirements as I do for there to be free will. According to the compatibilist, if the neurological system (or person) is able to operate without inhibition, we may as well call it free. And (according to that view) humans -and other animals- DO have free will. But, as I mentioned before, I reject that theory because I agree with the consequence argument-- the one that said "Nothing we can do now can change the past.").

And I agree that there is nothing we can do now to change the past, but that in no way speaks to the future. And what is volition except the determination of the future, right? It is not about changing the past, the past does not strictly determine the future, and in that indeterminism lies some true volition.

Even though I reject compatibilism, it does make some decent points. One thing they like to point out is that we already make distinctions between free and unfree in life. If I'm tied to a chair, for instance, I'm not free to move around. What we call, freedom, is merely the non-restriction of our organism. And so long as our organism could potentially move in more than one way, they call that freedom, and they conclude that (generally speaking) the will is free.

I am not arguing for free will. As I said from the start, I see human volition as being fettered or restricted. We are constrained by the unique physical configuration of our CNS and all the pre-wired instinctual behaviors inherent in it. We are constrained by our specific experiences, our socializations and indoctrinations. We are constrained by injury and illness. All these impact and influence our exercise of volition. Even so, we have some room within that to make choices and direct and change our future.

 

[Brian2]

Yes, according to [his] wishes. If you perfectly know that by taking steps A, B and C, the outcome will be X, and you then take steps A, B and C, EITHER you intended X OR you blundered into error. But a perfect God will never blunder into error, which leaves only God's intention.

Now, if we were free to take an omnipotent omniscient perfect God by surprise, to blindside [him], to defeat [his] intention, THAT would be theological free will.

As I said, ''Not according to His wishes but according to His foreknowledge. So He allows the future to unfold as He sees it will. And that future contains beings who have a will and use it as they see fit."
You ignore the fact that the beings God has foreseen have a will.
Because God has foreseen that beings with a free will would do evil things that does not mean that God wanted them to do those things. At most it means that a good God tolerates what the evil that they do.
So you ignore that we have a free will and ignore that God is good. If you work through the logic with these things still in place then you come to the conclusion that a good God who is all knowing and all powerful can allow and tolerate evil from being with free will. And the reason for this is the end result, which God also knows and is the reason God took the steps A,B and C in the first place. The end result, X, is still to come.

And God will have a parallel problem, I dare say, since God must have [his] own decision-making mental processes.

There is no problem here either. But of course you have not laid out what you see as the problem so I don't want to speculate about that problem and answer my speculation.

 

[blü 2]

As I said, ''Not according to His wishes but according to His foreknowledge. So He allows the future to unfold as He sees it will. And that future contains beings who have a will and use it as they see fit."

No, that makes no sense, cannot be available to God as an excuse.

Knowing that if you drive forward, you'll run over the dog, you then drive forward and run over the dog. That isn't allowing the future to unfold. That's you intending to run over the dog.

You ignore the fact that the beings God has foreseen have a will.

That will is no use to them ─ they can only and ever do (and think and feel and say) exactly what God perfectly foresaw for them when [he] made the universe. It is not free.

It feels free to the subject but that freedom is wholly illusory.

The subject MUST ALWAYS run down the groove God intended, can NEVER blindside God.

 

[Brian2]

No, that makes no sense, cannot be available to God as an excuse.

Knowing that if you drive forward, you'll run over the dog, you then drive forward and run over the dog. That isn't allowing the future to unfold. That's you intending to run over the dog.

You have made the example different from the reality.
If God drove forward and ran over the dog then you may have a point but if God drove forward and then others took over the driving and ran over the dog then it was not God who drove over the dog and made the driving over of the dog into something that the others could not have avoided by turning aside before coming to the dog. So it is others who drive over the dog and it is God who has allowed us to do that by starting the car.
Praise God for starting the car and giving us existence and sorry God that I have chosen to do evil instead of do good.

That will is no use to them ─ they can only and ever do (and think and feel and say) exactly what God perfectly foresaw for them when [he] made the universe. It is not free.

It feels free to the subject but that freedom is wholly illusory.

The subject MUST ALWAYS run down the groove God intended, can NEVER blindside God.

Of the things that limit the freedom of our choices, the foreknowledge of God is not one of them.
We can never blindside God but the groove is not one that God forces us to follow. At each point there are multiple possible choices and grooves and we choose what we choose, not what God forces on us.
How is God forcing us to do as we do? He is not. We are choosing, and if God is not forcing then we are choosing without coercion from God.
You just twist the story around. The story is that God knows what we will freely choose and you are taking away that freedom and saying that because God knows what we will freely choose then we cannot freely choose it. IOWs you are making the presumption that an all knowing God cannot create beings with free will.
Presumably then a God who is not all knowing CAN make people with free will.
If God made Adam and Eve we would end up in this same place in time with the same things done by us whether God knew what we would do or not. So what is the difference between God knowing or not?

 

[Heyo]

Of the things that limit the freedom of our choices, the foreknowledge of God is not one of them.
We can never blindside God but the groove is not one that God forces us to follow. At each point there are multiple possible choices and grooves and we choose what we choose, not what God forces on us.
How is God forcing us to do as we do? He is not. We are choosing, and if God is not forcing then we are choosing without coercion from God.
You just twist the story around. The story is that God knows what we will freely choose and you are taking away that freedom and saying that because God knows what we will freely choose then we cannot freely choose it. IOWs you are making the presumption that an all knowing God cannot create beings with free will.
Presumably then a God who is not all knowing CAN make people with free will.
If God made Adam and Eve we would end up in this same place in time with the same things done by us whether God knew what we would do or not. So what is the difference between God knowing or not?

You don't seem to understand the concept of perfect knowledge (of the future), determinism and free will.
If perfect knowledge exists, that means that the universe is deterministic. Every event is caused by one or more prior events. There is no randomness.
In a deterministic universe, free will doesn't exist. All our actions are caused by prior events. There is no randomness and there is no freedom of will.
Assume an entity exists that has perfect knowledge. That entity also has no free will. Everything is determined by the universe we live in.
There is no "force" that makes you do something, it is just the way it is determined.

 

[blü 2]

You have made the example different from the reality.
If God drove forward and ran over the dog then you may have a point but if God drove forward and then others took over the driving and ran over the dog then it was not God who drove over the dog and made the driving over of the dog into something that the others could not have avoided by turning aside before coming to the dog.

You (in our story) have driven over the dog knowing in advance what would happen if you drove over the dog.

God (in our story) has created the universe knowing in advance what would happen if [he] created the universe.

Just as, in human terms, if you drive onwards knowing this will lead to your driving over the dog then it's self-evident that you intend to drive over the dog,

so in God terms, if you create a universe knowing this will lead to someone aka blü 2 posting this post, then it's self-evident that you intend someone aka blü 2 to post this post.

The analogy is valid.

Of the things that limit the freedom of our choices, the foreknowledge of God is not one of them.

Of course it is, because God's foreknowledge plus God's act in going ahead and creating THIS universe demonstrate unambiguously that everything that ever happens only happens because God intended it to happen.

If God had NOT intended it to happen then [he] was completely free to make the universe another way which conformed to [his] will. But NO, with perfect foreknowledge of ALL the consequences of [his] act [he] made it THIS way.

We can never blindside God

If your argument were correct then of course we could. God wouldn't perfectly know what was going to happen next, because our free will would trump [his] foreknowledge, [his] omniscience. But of course that can't happen because God's foresight is perfect.

At each point there are multiple possible choices and grooves and we choose what we choose, not what God forces on us.

Simply wrong. We CAN'T choose anything but the choice God has perfectly known we'd make not just from before we were born but for at least 14 billion years.

How is God forcing us to do as we do?

By making the universe in exactly the manner [he] intended, result in each of us being exactly as [he] intended and acting exactly as [he] intended.

I say again, if we actually had theological freewill, then nothing would stop us blindsiding God. But of course we can't blindside [him]. [His] foreknowledge is perfect and thus everything we see is everything [he] always intended.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

But they are worth investigating (imo) because it's important to understand that the universe is causally closed.

I'm generally very sympathetic to philosophers of physics (and philosophy more generally) compared to the disdain many physicists too often display here. But even I have to admit that when it comes to statements about causal closure even eminent philosophers such as Mario Bunge err tragically in myriad ways when making assertions about what physics has to say on the matter.
But as I have much to say on another point you raise, I will temporarily simply quote from a theorist (quantum chemistry) who worked on foundational issues in physics and the appropriate formalisms and interpretation of quantum theory:
"The assertion that “modern science is premised on the assumption that the material world is a causally closed system” (Heil, 1998, p. 23) is in striking contradiction to experimental science. Every experiment requires an irreversible dynamics. No experiment refers to a closed physical system. In a strictly deterministic world it would neither be possible to perform meaningful experiments nor to verify the partially causal behavior of a physical system. We conclude that science neither assumes that the material world is a causally closed system, nor that physical laws imply the causal closure of physics." (italics in original)
Primas, H. (2009). Complementarity of Mind and Matter. In H. Atmanspacher & H. Primas (Eds.) Recasting Reality. Wolfgang Pauli's Philosophical Ideas and Contemporary Science (pp. 171-209). Springer.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I either disagree with (or misunderstand) this sentence. Would you mind clarifying?

Now that I have responded to the "causal closure" issue in brief above, I can dedicate a post to this matter.

I’ll start with the highlights of the summary of the cliff’s notes version of the answer I was writing before I realized it was already several pages and I hadn’t even reached in the of the prologue/preface component.

Determinism in classical physics is typically related to (and also taken to be described by) the fact that systems in classical physics are governed by laws encoded in (systems of) differential equations that possess (or are usually assumed to, with notable exceptions dominating certain areas in the literature such as Norton’s dome) unique solutions corresponding to unique trajectories either in “real” space or an abstract space (e.g., phase space) that is reducible to “real” space. The unique trajectory can only exist if there is a unique solution, and unique solutions require that one specify initial conditions (and/or boundary conditions).
So, determinism in classical physics depends upon specifying the initial conditions of a physical system and the assumption that the system is isolated (which relates to the ways in which boundary conditions are employed, among other things). This in turn relates both to the structure of physical theories and to the nature of experiments in physics.

In simple terms, what deterministic laws or behavior or phenomena boils down to from an empirical, experimental perspective is something like the following: if I set up experiments in roughly the same way at arbitrary times and places (that are made arbitrary by freedom of choice), and I have some system under investigation that is supposed to follow known dynamical laws (such as the laws of classical mechanics), then specifying the way I set-up my experiment and prepare my system corresponds to the initial conditions and/or boundary conditions of the dynamical (differential) equations. The determinism of classical physics is class of dynamical laws with equations of motions and so forth that allow me to state that, given a particular experimental set-up and state preparation, the evolution of the system will be such that if (theoretically) I know exactly the necessary values to plug into the dynamical laws governing my system together with either the fact that my experimental arrangement is more or less just that I have ensured the system is approximately isolated or I have ensured this and taken into account other important factors via boundary terms or something similar, then the state of my system after I let it evolve in time will correspond exactly to the mathematical solution for the system’s evolution.

In practice, of course, we never have precise knowledge of the relevant variables, and while we can generally ensure that a unique solution exists formally, almost all the time the solutions for real-world systems must be obtained computationally to some desired degree of accuracy.
But the point is that determinism in physics is generally taken to correspond to, and to be a result of, the fact that the laws of classical physics are of this type: given initial conditions/boundary conditions together with state specification, the evolution of the system in time is determined arbitrarily far into the future (provided it is isolated).

But in a deterministic universe, none of this makes any sense. First, it is nonsense to speak of initial conditions because there is at most one in a deterministic universe (if that universe had a beginning). Second, we can’t repeat experiments because the logic underlying the validity of inferences from such replication and reproducibility is altogether absent without any sort of experimental freedom of choice. Third, a prerequisite for the validity of classical laws in physics is the isolation of the system, which always approximate and corresponds not to universal determinism but the ability to show that under the same sorts of conditions the same sorts of systems will evolve dynamically in the same manner (in theory, at least).
This is not to say that the founders and great names in classical physics would have regarded determinism in this manner. They absolutely didn’t, as for one thing deterministic physics stopped making much sense in the 1800s when the notion that atomic primitives could make up the whole of a unified physics went drastically downhill. Even so, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, Euler, and others engaged in the new science of mechanics were typically making philosophical or even theological arguments about the universe that involved a Designer. Even for those who were not believers or did not invoke God, notions about a mechanical, deterministic universe were still very much metaphysical speculations that tended to become very much in doubt long before the advent of quantum mechanics (for a freely available, recent historical review, see e.g., “Was physics ever deterministic? The historical basis of determinism and the image of classical physics”

This is why, in quantum foundations, a new term had to be introduced to describe an approach to physical theories and experiments in which determinism applied also to all experiments and experimentalists. And even then, this new term (superdeterminism) and the loophole this potential “solution” is supposed to address (“free choice” or “freedom of choice”) is often addressed in terms of statistical independence, which is one way freedom of experimenters enters into the scientific practice more generally. Taken to the extreme, there is no possible way to close this loophole nor confirm superdeterminism, because the outcome of every experiment is predetermined by conditions over which we have no control at all and about which we would like to believe we do, as this is what makes physics (and empirical inquiry) possible:
"The condition that the choice of the experiments is taken to be a free one means that the experimentalist must be thought to be able to choose them at will, without being unconsciously forced to one or the other choice by some hidden determinism. This condition has an important role in the proof of the theorem. It is often left implicit because of its apparent obviousness. Here it is explicitly stated. But let it be observed that, when all is said and done, it appears as constituting the very condition of the possibility of any empirical science.”
(emphasis added, p. 64)
d'Espagnat, B. (2006). On Physics and Philosophy. Princeton University Press

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Every event is caused by one or more prior events. There is no randomness.

1) Every deterministic system is a special case of a stochastic or random system. One can, for example, treat ODEs and PDEs in the larger framework of stochastic differential equations, as the reduction to what we might call deterministic systems from statistical or probabilistic ones is one way of approaching such matters.
2) This statement is in blatant contradiction even with classical relativistic physics (both special and general).
3) Your assuming that which is to be argued in a rather ill-defined way. You take as unproblematic one of the most contentious notions (cause) and relate it to effects in a matter that was rather simplistic some 2,500 years ago, and then introduce a notion of randomness without taking into account that this is typically a notion defined without reference to temporal ordering (stochastic systems, like Markov chains, require more than randomness, while randomness itself allows for relations that are atemporal or even retrocausal).

 

[Brian2]

You don't seem to understand the concept of perfect knowledge (of the future), determinism and free will.
If perfect knowledge exists, that means that the universe is deterministic. Every event is caused by one or more prior events. There is no randomness.
In a deterministic universe, free will doesn't exist. All our actions are caused by prior events. There is no randomness and there is no freedom of will.

You don't seem to understand God's perfect knowledge of the future and how that is a knowledge of the future where free will exists.

Assume an entity exists that has perfect knowledge. That entity also has no free will. Everything is determined by the universe we live in.
There is no "force" that makes you do something, it is just the way it is determined.

If this entity that has perfect knowledge exists and has created a universe in which He knows all that will happen (even random events) and knows what being with free will are going to do, then He also knows all the things that He will freely choose to do.
It is true that He does these things because of what happens in the universe but it is also true that He has freely chosen to do these things as a response to what happens.

It is perfectly reasonable to say that God does not force anyone to do anything by foreknowing what everyone will do. (you even seem to agree with that)
God's foreknowledge is a foreknowledge of what God allows to happen and so is a foreknowledge of what we and He will freely choose.
Your idea of God's foreknowledge makes this foreknowledge into some sort of things that forces us to act as we do.
We (and He) would choose to do the same things whether God knew the future or not. If that is not the case then God's foreknowledge is a force and God's foreknowledge is not really perfect foreknowledge of even those things that are random.
God does not work out all the cause and effect events in order to see the future. God is just able to see the future.

 

[blü 2]

You take as unproblematic one of the most contentious notions (cause)

I think of a cause as a movement of energy from a region of higher energy to a region of lower energy, and an effect as any change that results. In non-quantum contexts the sequences of phenomena can be seen as chains of cause and effect, any randomness coming from intervening quantum effects.

 

[Heyo]

I wrote:

If perfect knowledge exists, that means that the universe is deterministic. Every event is caused by one or more prior events. There is no randomness.

You didn't quote the first sentence in that paragraph maybe because you didn't find it relevant. That lead to your misunderstanding. The first sentence is important.

1) Every deterministic system is a special case of a stochastic or random system. One can, for example, treat ODEs and PDEs in the larger framework of stochastic differential equations, as the reduction to what we might call deterministic systems from statistical or probabilistic ones is one way of approaching such matters.

I agree. But this is about philosophical determinism, one that allows perfect knowledge. I was describing the implications perfect knowledge would have.

2) This statement is in blatant contradiction even with classical relativistic physics (both special and general).

Yep.

3) Your assuming that which is to be argued in a rather ill-defined way. You take as unproblematic one of the most contentious notions (cause) and relate it to effects in a matter that was rather simplistic some 2,500 years ago, and then introduce a notion of randomness without taking into account that this is typically a notion defined without reference to temporal ordering (stochastic systems, like Markov chains, require more than randomness, while randomness itself allows for relations that are atemporal or even retrocausal).

Nope. I don't assume a deterministic universe, I conclude that a deterministic universe is the result of perfect knowledge.

 

[Heyo]

You don't seem to understand God's perfect knowledge of the future and how that is a knowledge of the future where free will exists.

I have a suspicion that we use different definitions of "free will". (And I have a sense of déjà vu.)