Free Will Vs Determinism

[Straw Dog]

Perhaps some of the differences between the arguments of Skwim and Legion center around the micro and the macro world. Like biological determinism operates differently than quantum physics.

 

[ratiocinator]

Probably not, but consider; why do you come to do the things you do? Either there is a reason, a cause, or there is not, no cause, in which case what you do would be utterly random. Assuming you don't opt for randomness then the only other option is causation. EVERYTHING that happens, including what you do and think is caused. AND every one of those causes had a cause. AND every one of those causes had a cause. And . . . . If you want to interject some kind of "freedom" into the mix then it too has to be accounted for by a cause. It arose because. . . . If it didn't then the reason would have had to be utter randomness.

I agree - it's pretty much what I was trying to say in #155.

No you couldn't because choice doesn't actually exist. It's an illusion. You do what you do because you can't do otherwise.

Unless there is some truly random element - but that doesn't really add to the idea of "choice".

The thing is that there is a part of the causal universe (or wider reality, if you want to posit a soul or something) that actually is you, it is the "thing" that is for some (as yet unknown) reason self-aware - and that is "free" to do exactly what it wants to do (practical constraints aside) - it's just that all its wants exist for reasons going back into the past, as you correctly point out. It's also quite capable of being influenced, persuaded of things, and to change its mind or priorities. The danger of denying freedom entirely is that it verges on fatalism, which isn't quite the same. What we think, the discussions we have, and experience people have, do shape the future.

 

[ratiocinator]

Perhaps some of the differences between the arguments of Skwim and Legion center around the micro and the macro world. Like biological determinism operates differently than quantum physics.

The thing is, if we take wave function collapse seriously, then all that does is introduce an element of randomness (that's probably irrelevant to the brain anyway) - and randomness cannot make anything more free to choose.

 

[Skwim]

The thing is that there is a part of the causal universe (or wider reality, if you want to posit a soul or something) that actually is you, it is the "thing" that is for some (as yet unknown) reason self-aware - and that is "free" to do exactly what it wants to do (practical constraints aside) - it's just that all its wants exist for reasons going back into the past, as you correctly point out. It's also quite capable of being influenced, persuaded of things, and to change its mind or priorities. The danger of denying freedom entirely is that it verges on fatalism, which isn't quite the same. What we think, the discussions we have, and experience people have, do shape the future.

But the alternative to randomness, determinism, is just that; a denial of anything that smacks of freedom. And like it or not it does come down to fatalism: All events are predetermined and therefore inevitable.

What we think, the discussions we have, and experience people have, do shape the future.

Yes, they all play their part.

.

 

[ratiocinator]

But the alternative to randomness, determinism, is just that; a denial of anything that smacks of freedom.

Only so long as you choose to define "freedom" as an logically incoherent concept in the first place.

You and me are reasoning, thinking entities that are making choices according to their own personalities, preferences, and abilities (the people we are due to some combination of nature, nurture, and experience) who can act free from external constraints (other than practical ones). I don't see why we can't call that "freedom".

It can't be any sort of freedom with respect to some omnipotent and omniscient creator of course (because it would have effectively chosen all of our nature, nurture, and experience) - so the idea that such a god could judge us is absurd - however, from a human perspective it makes sense to me in a way that defining "freedom" as a self-contradictory concept doesn't. A dictionary definition is "The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants." something we do actually have.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

So why is this a problem?

Because causality only goes in one direction (at least, your type of causality seems to; philosophers and scientists from Aristotle to theoretical biologists like Robert Rosen would disagree as Aristotle included teleological causes as a category of causation Rosen among others see anticipatory causation as a hallmark of living systems).
If the universe is governed by truly deterministic laws, then time cannot flow in any particular direction except insofar as it imposed externally. It would be as if you insist that E=mc^2 doesn't imply that E/m=c^2, because E must be on the left side of the equation. Deterministic physical laws give the evolution of systems in time so long as time is imposed from the outside:
"time is not an observable. Furthermore, neither classical physics nor special and general relativity nor quantum physics recognizes an asymmetry of temporal directions. Nevertheless, we usually presuppose tacitly a “principle of retarded causality”: no effect can precede its cause. But at a fundamental level there is no distinction between past and future. So, at this level, it makes no sense to speak of memory or anticipation, cause and effect." (p. 187)
Primas, H. (2017). Matter, Mind, and Time. In H. Atmanspacher (Ed.). Knowledge and Time (pp. 185-210). Springer.

Thus if you want to have causality somehow relate to physical determinism (i.e., to determinism of the kind said to exist due to physical laws which are deterministic) then you must immediately set about supplementing said determinism by imposing a causal order on the same deterministic laws that are supposed to provide you with evidence for a causally deterministic universe in the first place. A related concern is, of course, where this evidence for such a universe is supposed to come from, given that the entirety of empirical science rests on your supposition being false:
"The regulative principles of present-day experimental science require the power to create initial conditions, and they stress the facticity of the past and the probabilistic predictability of the future. It is a basic assumption in engineering science in particular that nature can be manipulated and that the initial conditions required by experiments can be prepared by interventions into the world external to the object under investigation. In other words, we assume that the experimenter has a certain freedom of action that is not accounted for by the first principles of physics.Without this freedom of choice, experiments would be pointless.
Even in physics we cannot exclude the subjective dimension of the human condition. Man’s free will implies the ability to initialize actions, and it constitutes his essence as a responsible actor. We act under the idea of freedom, but the point here is neither man’s sense of personal freedom as a subjective experience nor the question of whether this idea could be an illusion or not. The point is that the framework of experimental science requires the freedom of action as a constitutive though tacit presupposition." (p. 185; italics in original, emphasis added).
ibid.

Yup, our universe only runs in one direction, toward disorder

1) This is a statistical law. It does not hold for any system in a deterministic manner.
2) The universe only runs in one direction perhaps, but deterministic laws do not make this distinction. So either your causality is an extraneous feature that doesn't follow from physical laws, or your determinism isn't based on physical determinism, in which case you have advanced no evidence for it.

If it ran backward it would be a wholly other universe.

And indeed if you wish to impose a causal structure consistent with even classical relativistic physics you must do some externally to dynamical laws even in the case of special relativity by allowing for infinitely many "universes" that can at least theoretically be related providing one picks a particular local reference frame out of a larger universe in which time is essentially static. But this is no big deal. A bigger issue is that you now seem to be wishing to make use of a kind of physical determinism in which causality makes little sense per se, because the temporal component which is so essential to causality must be externally added to the physical laws that we have obtained empirically by assuming that we have the kind of freedom you deny, thus negating the logic which underlies the entirety of empirical science (with physics as a special case) and the evidence for a deterministic universe the said sciences have generated as well as the basis for asserting that it is determinism which somehow ensures that causes uniquely determine effects.

If one takes disorder into account it's quite clear how to distinguish past from future.

So long as one is willing to accept probability and randomness as fundamental characteristics of the governing equations of states and statistical features of collectives or ensambles as fundamental laws. But again, these are statistical laws, not deterministic ones. And again, one is then imposing an additional and superfluous ingredient to this would-be deterministic universe in order to make it consistent with causal directionality. There is no physical basis in any deterministic laws nor could there be (at least not globally). The laws are deterministic essentially because to the extent any systems we have empirically studied are deterministic we can only discover this by freely choosing the appropriate initial conditions and experimental settings from which we can generalize the laws with which we wish to characterize said physical systems. In other words, in classical physics we made ourselves external to the laws which govern systems because that's how you do physics and experiments more generally: treat it as isolated and use freedom of choice in order to specify initial conditions, including time, externally.

Not at all. Causality is a necessary given in determinism.

Yes, so you've said. But so far the only justification you've given is references to statistical laws and by fiat.

Why is the concept of cause → effect vague? And why is the concept of cause obscure?

Throughout most of time the notion of cause was understood in a manner in many ways similar to that you suggest here, but was not in any sense close to the kind of determinism you profess. Causes could be imposed atemporally or from the future onto the past. Also, most causes didn't have effects nor effects causes in the sense you describe, because causality had to explain not just dynamical situations but propensities, qualities, kinds, etc. Thus Socrates and Aristotle and others asked what caused things to be "bronzeness" but not why stones don't move (motion required a mover). This kind of question is still asked in certain sciences but we now understand it as fundamentally knowable given the complexities of the quantum many-body problem. Plato's forms/ideas also have analogues in modern concepts of causation of this type (that which asks what the cause of certain properties of nature are and what is the reason behind certain kinds existing in the manner they do and so forth) as do the Pythagoreans. In such cases the "cause" for so much of the universe we find ourselves in is due to an immaterial universe which for the Pythagoreans was a kind of mystic math and for Plato a world of forms while for Tegmark it is mathematic, for many theoretical physicists it is information, and for some mathematical physicists like Penrose it is a kind of Platonic mathematical universe.
It is easy to formulate cause and effect in way that people often do and have done which have nothing to do with determinism and violate all physical laws known (attributing power to Fate, to superstition, to natural tendencies and desires of an animate universe or animating powers, etc.). It is quite difficult to formulate a theory of causality which fails to do anything other than work as a label attached to a kind of physical determinism that is postulated to be causal because that's what you want rather than that's what follows from physical determinism, e.g., a theory of causality that can explain effects like the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics, bronzeness, or anything like the below equivalent to Aristotle's questions about bronzeness:
"The most fundamental question that one might be expected to answer is ‘‘why are there solids?’’ That is, if we were given a large number of atoms of copper, why should they form themselves into the regular array that we know as a crystal of metallic copper? Why should they not form an irregular structure like glass, or a superfluid liquid like helium?
We are ill-equipped to answer these questions in any other than a qualitative way..."
Taylor, P. L. & Heinonen, O. (2002). A Quantum Approach to Condensed Matter Physics. Cambridge University Press.

Your manner of causality is apparently to take as given a kind of physical determinism supplemented first by statistical laws that are then completely determined somehow and then to say that the fundamental asymmetries we observe are not just compatible somehow with this determinism but follow from it. You then ignore entire classes of causation for some reason because they don't fit neatly into a kind of deterministic situation you assume. This becomes problematic above and beyond all of the reasons already mentioned because you would then have to explain in addition what it is that causes the illusion of choices and volition as well as what is causing us to believe we can choose to cause and all of this in a kind of infinite regress as the only kind of causality your determinism admits is one in which future states follow completely from the laws governing the universe at past times (even though these same laws are either apparently statistical so as to allow for disorder and/or cannot be made consistent with the directionality required of causality).

Seems the author simply doesn't like the Jamesian implication.

The author is trying to get at a consistent definition of determinism. As the literature in causality predates that on determinism by over a thousand years and is among the most obscure in existence, defining determinism isn't helped by doing so with reference to causation without addressing the myriad of concerns the raise over and against those already present in defining determinism without reference to causality. You blithely ignore all such concerns with formulaic prescription, but as this prescription has been better and more fully developed by thinkers from antiquity in ways that you would wholly disagree with, I don't see how blithely ignoring the philosophical nuances (not to mention the basic physics and mathematics) amount to an argument.

 

[Straw Dog]

The thing is, if we take wave function collapse seriously, then all that does is introduce an element of randomness (that's probably irrelevant to the brain anyway) - and randomness cannot make anything more free to choose.

I agree. Everything happens for a reason, including our decisions.

Observing our desires and aversions carefully, we can see them pulling us this way and that way like strings.

 

[Skwim]

Because causality only goes in one direction (at least, your type of causality seems to; philosophers and scientists from Aristotle to theoretical biologists like Robert Rosen would disagree as Aristotle included teleological causes as a category of causation Rosen among others see anticipatory causation as a hallmark of living systems).
If the universe is governed by truly deterministic laws, then time cannot flow in any particular direction except insofar as it imposed externally. It would be as if you insist that E=mc^2 doesn't imply that E/m=c^2, because E must be on the left side of the equation. Deterministic physical laws give the evolution of systems in time so long as time is imposed from the outside:
"time is not an observable. Furthermore, neither classical physics nor special and general relativity nor quantum physics recognizes an asymmetry of temporal directions. Nevertheless, we usually presuppose tacitly a “principle of retarded causality”: no effect can precede its cause. But at a fundamental level there is no distinction between past and future. So, at this level, it makes no sense to speak of memory or anticipation, cause and effect." (p. 187)
Primas, H. (2017). Matter, Mind, and Time. In H. Atmanspacher (Ed.). Knowledge and Time (pp. 185-210). Springer.

Thus if you want to have causality somehow relate to physical determinism (i.e., to determinism of the kind said to exist due to physical laws which are deterministic) then you must immediately set about supplementing said determinism by imposing a causal order on the same deterministic laws that are supposed to provide you with evidence for a causally deterministic universe in the first place. A related concern is, of course, where this evidence for such a universe is supposed to come from, given that the entirety of empirical science rests on your supposition being false:
"The regulative principles of present-day experimental science require the power to create initial conditions, and they stress the facticity of the past and the probabilistic predictability of the future. It is a basic assumption in engineering science in particular that nature can be manipulated and that the initial conditions required by experiments can be prepared by interventions into the world external to the object under investigation. In other words, we assume that the experimenter has a certain freedom of action that is not accounted for by the first principles of physics.Without this freedom of choice, experiments would be pointless.
Even in physics we cannot exclude the subjective dimension of the human condition. Man’s free will implies the ability to initialize actions, and it constitutes his essence as a responsible actor. We act under the idea of freedom, but the point here is neither man’s sense of personal freedom as a subjective experience nor the question of whether this idea could be an illusion or not. The point is that the framework of experimental science requires the freedom of action as a constitutive though tacit presupposition." (p. 185; italics in original, emphasis added).
ibid.

Sorry, but I fail to see any relevance to my question.

1) This is a statistical law. It does not hold for any system in a deterministic manner.

Whaaa?

2) The universe only runs in one direction perhaps, but deterministic laws do not make this distinction.

Sure it does. cause → effect: always. effect → cause: never.

And indeed if you wish to impose a causal structure consistent with even classical relativistic physics you must do some externally to dynamical laws even in the case of special relativity by allowing for infinitely many "universes" that can at least theoretically be related providing one picks a particular local reference frame out of a larger universe in which time is essentially static.

I fail to see any relevancy.

You know, we're so far apart here I don't believe our exchanges are doing either of us any good, so I'm going to let you have the last word if you wish.

Have a good day.

.

 

[Straw Dog]

Even if future states could affect the past or present, it would still be in a chain of causality, albeit somewhat circular or paradoxical.

Like if a T800 came back from the future to terminate John Conner, there’d still be a causal reason why Conner was terminated... I mean, besides milking a franchise beyond the point of its relevance.

 

[ratiocinator]

"The regulative principles of present-day experimental science require the power to create initial conditions, and they stress the facticity of the past and the probabilistic predictability of the future. It is a basic assumption in engineering science in particular that nature can be manipulated and that the initial conditions required by experiments can be prepared by interventions into the world external to the object under investigation. In other words, we assume that the experimenter has a certain freedom of action that is not accounted for by the first principles of physics.Without this freedom of choice, experiments would be pointless.

This simply doesn't follow. There is nothing at all about scientific experimentation, that transfers information from one part of the universe (the experiment) to another (the mind of the experimenter) through a process of interaction, that requires an intervention that is outside of physics. In fact, evolution by natural selection does something similar in transferring information from the environment into the genome by "trial and error" over generations, and no nonsensical notion of "free will" outside of physics, not even a mind, is required. All that is needed is a process of investigation that is effectively (for all practical purposes) independent of the specific experiment.

This is just an example from a lot of philosophical waffle, assertions, and discussion on the nature of time and causality. All of which have little or no relevance to the point.

The exact nature of time doesn't matter because the universe is clearly "lawful", in that it is possible to examine one point in time and make deductions about the future (or the past) from that - either fully deterministically or involving some uncertainty or randomness.

The best understanding we have of time comes from general relativity and that gives us a causal structure within an atemporal "block universe" or space-time manifold - and there is plenty of evidence for said theory. The direction of time has been the subject of much debate but most likely comes from the fact that the past has very low entropy compared to the future.

All of this is utterly irrelevant however, because the very existence of thinking minds that can understand the universe and make choices requires directional time and a causal structure. We make choices based on information gathered from the past and our understanding of the possible consequences in the future - otherwise they would be purposeless and meaningless. How exactly directional time and causality comes about doesn't matter - either regarding the physical universe or any proposed non-physical soul that anybody may propose.

Thinking, choice-making minds like ours exist, and can only exist, within directed time and causality.

We are then back to the situation that any event (including human choices) are either fully the result of all its antecedents or it isn't. And if it isn't, then, to the extent it isn't, it is due to nothing and is therefore, to that extent, random. Even if we forget the direction of time, an event (including a choice) is either there entirely because of reasons within some structured relationship between it and other events or it is there, to some extent, for no reason (random).

The idea of free will (compatibilism aside) is simply incoherent - and nothing in your protracted post seems to come close to addressing the basic contradiction it represents.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Perhaps some of the differences between the arguments of Skwim and Legion center around the micro and the macro world. Like biological determinism operates differently than quantum physics.

I am not concerned with any particular scale of physical phenomena, although were I to draw on those scales that I think most relevant to make the points I have then most examples would be from astrophysics or at the least the macrophysics of (classical) statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. In point of fact, to the extent that the OP’s claim regarding determinism and randomness can be said to draw on evidence from any empirical science (let alone any particular domain of application for some theory within physics), it is in contradiction with all of them:

“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…

All experimental science is based on the understanding that the actions of an experimenter are intentional, and not actions which happen to him. There are no physical laws which cover intentionality (understood as the mind’s directedness upon objects). Experimental physics demands the distinction of past and future, the concept of the now, and the freedom of the experimenter to choose initial conditions. To test experimentally whether a given physical system is causal, it is indispensable that the experimenter has the freedom to deliberately choose (within well-defined limits) a stimulus and then to record the response. Moreover, it is required that an experiment can be repeated at any particular instant.

Sometimes it is claimed that such a freedom is illusory. Yet, without this freedom all experimental science would be pointless:
To deny the freedom of action of an experimenter
is to deny the meaningfulness of experimental science.
Every experimental investigation presupposes that the specific design and implementation of an experiment is compatible with, but not exclusively determined by, known physical laws. This situation does not imply that the first principles of physics are inconsistent or not valid, but only that they cannot account for intentionally chosen experimental arrangements and initial conditions. This fact 'proves that contingency is an essential feature of the world'” (pp. 174-175) (italics in original; emphases added)

Primas, H. (). Complementarity of Mind and Matter. In H. Atmanspracher & H. Primas (Eds.) Recasting Reality: Wolfgang Pauli's Philosophical Ideas and Contemporary Science (pp. 171-209). Springer.

The OP puts forward an ontological claim that not only is intended to apply to this universe but to all possible universes at all scales: either everything is determined or it is random. This being deemed a necessary truth, it is then argued that in actual fact everything is actually determined (with some seeming allowance for something like randomness at the quantum scale, although it is not clear what is meant by this point or to what extent it is actually thought possible).

A central point of mine is that this basic premise is problematic at best and as stated is fundamentally flawed. One need only look at some ~1,500 years of philosophical literature up to Newton and Laplace to realize that one cannot simply expect any particular formulation of causation to follow from the adoption of some form of determinism. It is perhaps necessarily true that everything is either determined or indeterministic (though e.g., classical statistical mechanics, as we will see below, is both, yielding a kind of statistical determinism). It does not follow that if everything or anything is not deterministic then it is somehow random, still less that causality flows from the deterministic case. Heat/thermal systems which require statistical mechanical descriptions provide a standard but nonetheless illuminating case of one way in which irreducible, macroscopic indeterminism can emerge from aggregate behaviors of deterministic systems in a manner that fundamentally shapes the world in which we live and requires randomness alongside determinism.

A key difference between statistical mechanics and thermodynamics concerns assumptions about the systems in question. In classical statistical mechanics, it is generally assumed that the physical states described could in principle be reduced to a Hamiltonian (or something similar). The state of each molecule or similar constitutent is described by its own dynamical equation according to classical mechanics. In thermodynamics, fundamental properties of the relevant systems cannot even in principle be reduced either to classical mechanical descriptions of constituents or the kind of physical determinism described in the OP. Rather, they are properties possessed by large collectives (ensemble). These properties do not characterize and cannot characterize the constituents of these collectives. Moreover, they are not deterministic but are ascribed to systems according to probabilistic laws governing the tendencies or propensities of macrophysical states of said equivalence classes.

In short, even if one were able to describe something like the behavior of gas molecules using the deterministic equations of classical physics, one could not then say anything about the temperature or similar characteristics of the gases:

“one can assign an ‘objective’ temperature to a body only on the basis of evidence concerning the average velocity of its constituent particles, some of which escape form the object (altering thereby ‘the body’) and recorded by a detector whose own physical properties are involved essentially in the ‘reading’. If one had a LaPlacean [sic] knowledge of all the particles involved, that is, a complete tabulation of all the component micro-events and their interrelations, then one could predict the time and nature of every actual recording by the detector. But then, in such a case, one could no longer assign an objective temperature to the body; because the very concepts of objective temperature and entropy presuppose statistical disorder in the phenomena. ‘Objective temperature’ and ‘actual recordings’ are thus mutually exclusive notions, though commentary. The former requires complete randomness; the latter, by determining and defining an actual event, eliminates randomness to that extent. The former is fundamentally indeterminate. The latter is de facto determined.” (pp. 81-82)
Hanson, N. R. (1963). The Concept of the Positron. Cambridge University Press.

Thus above we have an example of a phenomena that is macroscopic, fundamental to the very idea of the arrow of time and to everyday life, and is an example of systems which cannot have the necessary properties they have without recourse to randomness and to statistical properties even assuming that we could describe the constituents of these systems completely using classical mechanics.

Of course, it is not the case that one can ever describe those systems which require classical statistical mechanics as in principle composed of constitutents obeying classical, deterministic laws as assumed. This is where quantum mechanics is required. Also, as radiation is where we find (historically) the origins of quantum theory, hereto classical thermodynamics is incomplete and inadequate. Likewise, nothing has been said here of the ways in which events themselves must unfold differently depending upon reference frames in relativistic physics. Then we could get into issues such as multiple causation, contingency, indeterministic causation, etc. But here I just want to point out that my arguments are not based upon any scale or domain of physics but to all physical scales as well as physics (and empirical sciences more generally) as a whole.

 

[ratiocinator]

All experimental science is based on the understanding that the actions of an experimenter are intentional, and not actions which happen to him. There are no physical laws which cover intentionality (understood as the mind’s directedness upon objects). Experimental physics demands the distinction of past and future, the concept of the now, and the freedom of the experimenter to choose initial conditions. To test experimentally whether a given physical system is causal, it is indispensable that the experimenter has the freedom to deliberately choose (within well-defined limits) a stimulus and then to record the response.

How do you even define "freedom" here? The mind of the experimenter is necessarily a part of reality (it exists) and further that it cogitates and arrives at its choices somehow. In other words, it has internal structure and ways of making choices over time. It must therefore either be operating as a deterministic system or not. If not, then it must involve an element of randomness.

Either all the antecedents (internal and external to the mind) fully determine the outcome or there is randomness. The specifics are unimportant - those are the only logical alternatives.

Sometimes it is claimed that such a freedom is illusory. Yet, without this freedom all experimental science would be pointless:
To deny the freedom of action of an experimenter
is to deny the meaningfulness of experimental science.
Every experimental investigation presupposes that the specific design and implementation of an experiment is compatible with, but not exclusively determined by, known physical laws.

This is a meaningless assertion - again, what does "freedom" even mean in the context and why would experimental choices being determined by known (or unknown) physical (or non-physical) law make experimental science pointless?

 

[Straw Dog]

I am not concerned with any particular scale of physical phenomena, although were I to draw on those scales that I think most relevant to make the points I have then most examples would be from astrophysics or at the least the macrophysics of (classical) statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. In point of fact, to the extent that the OP’s claim regarding determinism and randomness can be said to draw on evidence from any empirical science (let alone any particular domain of application for some theory within physics), it is in contradiction with all of them:

“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…

All experimental science is based on the understanding that the actions of an experimenter are intentional, and not actions which happen to him. There are no physical laws which cover intentionality (understood as the mind’s directedness upon objects). Experimental physics demands the distinction of past and future, the concept of the now, and the freedom of the experimenter to choose initial conditions. To test experimentally whether a given physical system is causal, it is indispensable that the experimenter has the freedom to deliberately choose (within well-defined limits) a stimulus and then to record the response. Moreover, it is required that an experiment can be repeated at any particular instant.

Sometimes it is claimed that such a freedom is illusory. Yet, without this freedom all experimental science would be pointless:
To deny the freedom of action of an experimenter
is to deny the meaningfulness of experimental science.
Every experimental investigation presupposes that the specific design and implementation of an experiment is compatible with, but not exclusively determined by, known physical laws. This situation does not imply that the first principles of physics are inconsistent or not valid, but only that they cannot account for intentionally chosen experimental arrangements and initial conditions. This fact 'proves that contingency is an essential feature of the world'” (pp. 174-175) (italics in original; emphases added)

Primas, H. (). Complementarity of Mind and Matter. In H. Atmanspracher & H. Primas (Eds.) Recasting Reality: Wolfgang Pauli's Philosophical Ideas and Contemporary Science (pp. 171-209). Springer.

The OP puts forward an ontological claim that not only is intended to apply to this universe but to all possible universes at all scales: either everything is determined or it is random. This being deemed a necessary truth, it is then argued that in actual fact everything is actually determined (with some seeming allowance for something like randomness at the quantum scale, although it is not clear what is meant by this point or to what extent it is actually thought possible).

A central point of mine is that this basic premise is problematic at best and as stated is fundamentally flawed. One need only look at some ~1,500 years of philosophical literature up to Newton and Laplace to realize that one cannot simply expect any particular formulation of causation to follow from the adoption of some form of determinism. It is perhaps necessarily true that everything is either determined or indeterministic (though e.g., classical statistical mechanics, as we will see below, is both, yielding a kind of statistical determinism). It does not follow that if everything or anything is not deterministic then it is somehow random, still less that causality flows from the deterministic case. Heat/thermal systems which require statistical mechanical descriptions provide a standard but nonetheless illuminating case of one way in which irreducible, macroscopic indeterminism can emerge from aggregate behaviors of deterministic systems in a manner that fundamentally shapes the world in which we live and requires randomness alongside determinism.

A key difference between statistical mechanics and thermodynamics concerns assumptions about the systems in question. In classical statistical mechanics, it is generally assumed that the physical states described could in principle be reduced to a Hamiltonian (or something similar). The state of each molecule or similar constitutent is described by its own dynamical equation according to classical mechanics. In thermodynamics, fundamental properties of the relevant systems cannot even in principle be reduced either to classical mechanical descriptions of constituents or the kind of physical determinism described in the OP. Rather, they are properties possessed by large collectives (ensemble). These properties do not characterize and cannot characterize the constituents of these collectives. Moreover, they are not deterministic but are ascribed to systems according to probabilistic laws governing the tendencies or propensities of macrophysical states of said equivalence classes.

In short, even if one were able to describe something like the behavior of gas molecules using the deterministic equations of classical physics, one could not then say anything about the temperature or similar characteristics of the gases:

“one can assign an ‘objective’ temperature to a body only on the basis of evidence concerning the average velocity of its constituent particles, some of which escape form the object (altering thereby ‘the body’) and recorded by a detector whose own physical properties are involved essentially in the ‘reading’. If one had a LaPlacean [sic] knowledge of all the particles involved, that is, a complete tabulation of all the component micro-events and their interrelations, then one could predict the time and nature of every actual recording by the detector. But then, in such a case, one could no longer assign an objective temperature to the body; because the very concepts of objective temperature and entropy presuppose statistical disorder in the phenomena. ‘Objective temperature’ and ‘actual recordings’ are thus mutually exclusive notions, though commentary. The former requires complete randomness; the latter, by determining and defining an actual event, eliminates randomness to that extent. The former is fundamentally indeterminate. The latter is de facto determined.” (pp. 81-82)
Hanson, N. R. (1963). The Concept of the Positron. Cambridge University Press.

Thus above we have an example of a phenomena that is macroscopic, fundamental to the very idea of the arrow of time and to everyday life, and is an example of systems which cannot have the necessary properties they have without recourse to randomness and to statistical properties even assuming that we could describe the constituents of these systems completely using classical mechanics.

Of course, it is not the case that one can ever describe those systems which require classical statistical mechanics as in principle composed of constitutents obeying classical, deterministic laws as assumed. This is where quantum mechanics is required. Also, as radiation is where we find (historically) the origins of quantum theory, hereto classical thermodynamics is incomplete and inadequate. Likewise, nothing has been said here of the ways in which events themselves must unfold differently depending upon reference frames in relativistic physics. Then we could get into issues such as multiple causation, contingency, indeterministic causation, etc. But here I just want to point out that my arguments are not based upon any scale or domain of physics but to all physical scales as well as physics (and empirical sciences more generally) as a whole.

I can understand the gist of your argument and possibly it is valid and based on the history of evidence. My knowledge of the physical sciences is too limited to argue the point though. I’m somewhat more educated in psychology and philosophy.

It does seem that much of the history of philosophy involves attempts at contriving a metaphysics with the intent to justify a particular set of ethics rather than understand the physical nature of reality in the same way that modern science works. Laypersons are mostly concerns with the moral implications, i.e. how should we live.

I’m not convinced by libertarian free will arguments, but I could possibly be swayed by some compatibilist theories of control and degrees of freedom, although they depend upon redefining what free will means.

 

[Straw Dog]

Upon re-reading this thread and doing some further research, I’ve changed my mind and would like to argue in the opposite direction in favor of free will to a degree.

Yes, our brains are programmed by our experiences, but some degree of brain processing can consciously select and modify our reactions to experiences. We can overrule bad subconscious decision-making when needed and affect our own programming. Brain functions have non-linear self-organizing dynamics that are readily altered by conscious imagination, judgement, reason, and creativity.

 

[ratiocinator]

Yes, our brains are programmed by our experiences, but some degree of brain processing can consciously select and modify our reactions to experiences.

How do they go about doing that? For other reasons or for no reasons? If for reasons, where did they come from, if not our experience, nature, and nurture (our personalities and abilities)? If for no reason, they are random.

Brain functions have non-linear self-organizing dynamics...

What does that mean and is it deterministic (possibly chaotic) or does it involve randomness?

...that are readily altered by conscious imagination, judgement, reason, and creativity.

Again, how do all these things work if they are not a direct result of our personalities, abilities, likes, and dislikes, that all came from our experience, nature, and nurture?

Consciousness really changes nothing about the logic (much as many people seem to like to think it does), there is even evidence that consciousness lags actual choice-making. At the end of the day we all do what we want to do most (after considering the options according to our imagination and abilities). Yes, we can overrule our desire for something but only because we want something else more - and we cannot choose what we want the most because that would lead into an infinite regress: what do we want to want the most, what do we want to want to want the most, and so on.

More simply, if a choice is not the inevitable result of all the influencing factors (including the experience, nature, and nurture of the chooser), then some part of it must be because of none of the influencing factors, which would make that part of it random.

 

[Straw Dog]

How do they go about doing that? For other reasons or for no reasons? If for reasons, where did they come from, if not our experience, nature, and nurture (our personalities and abilities)? If for no reason, they are random.



What does that mean and is it deterministic (possibly chaotic) or does it involve randomness?



Again, how do all these things work if they are not a direct result of our personalities, abilities, likes, and dislikes, that all came from our experience, nature, and nurture?

Consciousness really changes nothing about the logic (much as many people seem to like to think it does), there is even evidence that consciousness lags actual choice-making. At the end of the day we all do what we want to do most (after considering the options according to our imagination and abilities). Yes, we can overrule our desire for something but only because we want something else more - and we cannot choose what we want the most because that would lead into an infinite regress: what do we want to want the most, what do we want to want to want the most, and so on.

More simply, if a choice is not the inevitable result of all the influencing factors (including the experience, nature, and nurture of the chooser), then some part of it must be because of none of the influencing factors, which would make that part of it random.

It’s a compatibilist argument or soft determinism.

The reasons are generated within an internal feedback loop of processing. It’s not absolute free will, but it’s a degree of control. In other words, we are affecting our own programming in a non-linear fashion. It’s not a straightforward cause-effect relationship. It’s self-organizing behavior within the organism.

Whenever information is processed consciously, the brain has greater access to mechanisms for generating willed actions that are neither pre-determined nor predictable.

Why do you think it’s so difficult to predict human behavior?

 

[ratiocinator]

It’s a compatibilist argument or soft determinism.

I agree with compatibilism but that is strictly deterministic. Not sure what you mean by "soft determinism" in the context.

The reasons are generated within an internal feedback loop of processing. It’s not absolute free will, but it’s a degree of control. In other words, we are affecting our own programming in a non-linear fashion. It’s not a straightforward cause-effect relationship. It’s self-organizing behavior within the organism.

The details are undoubtedly complex and involve internal feedback, and probably pretty much every experience affects our "programming" to some extent. The point is that, whatever is happening in the mind is either a deterministic system or it isn't, and therefore involves randomness (which can't increase "freedom" in any sense I can see).

If you could rewind time and face exactly the same choice in exactly the same state of mind, could you have done differently? If no, then we have a deterministic system, if yes, there can be no reason for the difference, so it must involve randomness.

Why do you think it’s so difficult to predict human behavior?

Pure complexity, the fact that the mind, if it is fully deterministic, is probably chaotic in the mathematical sense (subject to the butterfly effect).

 

[Straw Dog]

I agree with compatibilism but that is strictly deterministic. Not sure what you mean by "soft determinism" in the context.



The details are undoubtedly complex and involve internal feedback, and probably pretty much every experience affects our "programming" to some extent. The point is that, whatever is happening in the mind is either a deterministic system or it isn't, and therefore involves randomness (which can't increase "freedom" in any sense I can see).

If you could rewind time and face exactly the same choice in exactly the same state of mind, could you have done differently? If no, then we have a deterministic system, if yes, there can be no reason for the difference, so it must involve randomness.



Pure complexity, the fact that the mind, if it is fully deterministic, is probably chaotic in the mathematical sense (subject to the butterfly effect).

Compatibilism is soft determinism, in attempting to find a middle ground between the two extremes.

If things could unwind, and external conditions were exactly the same, hypothetically we could have done differently due to internal processing. The initial causes and conditions of our consciousness do not fully dictate the results of our actions. We could have thought about it differently or modified our reactions through conscious overrule. It’s self-determinism, neither libertarian free will or hard determinism. Practically speaking, we are responsible for our actions.

So why is predicting the human mind that much more complex than pushing a boulder down a mountain?

 

[Straw Dog]

As a side note, I have a sneaking suspicion that we may sometimes support certain metaphysics specifically that justify our particular ethics or lack thereof... like as a coping mechanism or cognitive dissociation or intellectualization to avoid responsibility or other unpleasant life experiences.

 

[ratiocinator]

Compatibilism is soft determinism, in attempting to find a middle ground between the two extremes.

Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible, it isn't really a middle ground, it's a more rational notion of what "free will" means.

If things could unwind, and external conditions were exactly the same, hypothetically we could have done differently due to internal processing. The initial causes and conditions of our consciousness do not fully dictate the results of our actions.

If everything (internal to the mind as well as external) were exactly the same and the outcome could have been different then difference cannot be for any reason (all the reasons are the same), the only difference must be entirely random.

We could have thought about it differently or modified our reactions through conscious overrule.

"Conscious overrule" is logically meaningless. Either the "overrule" is entirely due to its antecedents or it is, to some extent, random. Consciousness makes no logical difference to anything.

Practically speaking, we are responsible for our actions.

This I agree with.