Compatible? Not Really.

_{Barry Arrington

December 20, 2008

Intelligent Design}

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One of our commenters says he has solved the determinism problem by becoming a “compatibilist.” Briefly, a compatibilist is someone who tries to avoid the logic of his premises by resorting to semantic dodges about the meaning of free will. The compatibilist says that free will is compatible with determinism (thus the name). Isn’t that kinda like saying my existence is compatible with my nonexistence? Yes, it is. But the compatibilist avoids this problem by re-defining “free will.” The compatibilist says that “free will” does not mean “the liberty to choose;” instead, says he, it means “the absence of coercion.” In other words, he says that so long as a choice is not coerced it is completely free even if it is utterly determined.

The problem with this approach is easy to see – just as we don’t get to win a game by changing the rules to suit us in the middle of the game, we don’t get to impose meaning on words to suit the conclusion we want to reach. The entire issue in the determinism/free will debate is whether we have liberty to choose. Suppose I ask my friend Joe the following question: “Do I have free will, if by “free will” I mean ‘the liberty to choose?’” It is obviously no answer to that question to say, “Yes, you have free will if by free will you mean, “the absence of coercion.” I really do want to explore the question about whether I have the liberty to choose, and Joe’s answer is not helpful. You might even say Joe dodged the question. Thus, in the end, the compatibilist answers a question no one has asked.

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1953, aphorism 109

Comments

"If you fall out of an airplane, you cannot choose to go up." I hope it isn't regarded as sophistry, but yes, you can choose to fall up (or survive the fall relatively unharmed); the fact that probably cannot succeed in "falling up" or surviving unharmed doesn't change the fact that you can choose to, or intend to. Failure to accomplish isn't the same as not choosing that intent in the first place. It is IMO this very ability to intend, or choose (even if it is followed by a lack of success) that which is physically constrained or opposingly coerced that is the earmark of true free will. I can choose to try things that all information, fact, and evidence describe as impossible; that I can do so is in itself evidence that uncaused, true free will exists. Without such choices to attempt the apparent impossible, where would the human race be now?William J. Murray_{December 21, 2008
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Clive Hayden wrote:
I live in the reality-based world partner. I am a patient moderator with you rib, I expect some decency in return. When I first started moderating you complained that there was a double standard of moderation, so I apologized on behalf of all who gave you any undue disrespect, I expect an apology in return for your undue disrespect to me.
Clive, I didn't ask for an apology. I asked for a single standard to be applied to ID supporters and critics alike at UD. Here are some suggestions: 1. Polite, on-topic comments from ID supporters don't languish in the moderation queue for hours, and they certainly aren't deleted. Stop doing this to polite, on-topic comments from ID critics. 2. ID supporters regularly insult critics with impunity at UD, so don't object when a critic calls you 'smarmy', particularly when... 3. ...it happens outside of UD. You don't police the off-blog activities of ID supporters, so don't do it to ID critics. 4. Apologies aren't demanded from ID supporters, so don't demand them from critics. One standard for all commenters. Is that so hard to understand?ribczynski_{December 21, 2008
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Mark --Is this “liberty to choose” different from “ability to choose”? A stone in my garden has the freedom to choose. It just doesn’t have the ability. There is no mechanism for doing it. Does this capture it? Your analogy shows the difficulty in defending compatibilism. You ask if "liberty" is "different" from ability then answer yes by saying your stone has "freedom" but no "ability", although I think you mean the answer to be no. And we really don't want to devolve into a semantic argument about any shades of differences in the meaning of "freedom" and "liberty", do we? I'll grant that ability is a prerequisite for liberty, although they are not exactly the same. Your stone is bound by laws with which it cannot interact. Man is also bound by laws but has the liberty/freedom to interact with them. If you fall out of an airplane, you cannot choose to go up. You can, however, choose to get on the airplane.tribune7_{December 21, 2008
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Thomas’s answer is that the unregenerate mind cannot be free, but the regenerate mind has the freedom to choose that which is contrary to enlightened reason. In Christianity, the choice is between “the way” and the world. It is the way itself that provides freedom, not the choice, since the world is regarded as slavery. Incidentally, the question of free will carves up between the Platonists and the Aristotelians. People who are by nature followers of Plato—the “unhappy consciousness” that is uncomfortable with mixed values and longs for purity—tend to want to negate the construct of sense and intellect to obtain one, shining ideal. For Plato, this meant negating sense for the sake of pure intellect. For the modern idealists, it means negating intellect for the sake of pure sense, as reflected in the determinism of Provine and Dawkins.allanius_{December 21, 2008
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#37: "As for whether or not the will is determined: is anyone seriously suggesting that it is not determined? Every effect has a cause." I think that's the essence of this debate. Without an "uncaused cause" free will, then there is no such thing as meaningful free will, personal responsibility, etc. I think something posters here are really burying under semantics and discussions about constraint and coercion is this: true free will is able to make a decision or intend a choice in defiance of whatever constraint, coercion, or cause-and-effect scenarios it finds its apparatus-of-application mired within. In other words, whatever the physical and mental conditions, context and programming of the body/brain/mind might be, the "thing" we call free will must be a spark of uncaused intent outside of all of that, or it is essentially meaningless, bound to intend as a result of cause.William J. Murray_{December 21, 2008
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#34 dgosse “coerce” implies action by another agent to compel your action, Fair enough. I would prefer to use the word "constraint" rather than coercion. Clearly having a crippling disease reduces my freedom but it is not coercion. but in materialism there are no agents, only forces that compel, constrain, and coerce your actions, whether those forces have the appearance of ‘persons’ or not. Obviously I don't agree. That is exactly what we are debating.Mark Frank_{December 21, 2008
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#37 Vividbleau I only just read this. Spot on.Mark Frank_{December 21, 2008
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"Now, if it be true that we have even a limited free will then we cannot have any coercion whatsoever, while threat of eternal damnation is coercion indeed, and incompatible with free will, even of the limited variety." Nonsense. The threat of capital punishment is coercion and people commit urder all the time. Vividvividbleau_{December 21, 2008
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I will add a few more short comments so as not to create indigestible chunks. Barry's original post and then Tribune7 in #18 and #33 define free will as "liberty to choose". You seem reluctant to define liberty as freedom from constraint. So I will try a different approach. Is this "liberty to choose" different from "ability to choose"? A stone in my garden has the freedom to choose. It just doesn't have the ability. There is no mechanism for doing it. Does this capture it? If so, this now comes down to a discussion of what we mean by "choose". We talk of people, dogs, snails, plants and even computers choosing - although obviously there are big differences in the mechanisms for making the choice. Which, if any, of these varieties of choosing are incompatible with determinism? How do you know? (Other than defining free will as the method of choosing which is incompatible with determinism!)Mark Frank_{December 21, 2008
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Compatibilism is not so simple as to say my existence is compatible with my nonexistence. After all, we cannot possibly have total freedom. But from the important angle, that is, the spiritual one, if our decisions are not coerced, that is freedom. Even if, in the end, only one choice is possible as there really is only one reality and God is that one reality. Now, if it be true that we have even a limited free will then we cannot have any coercion whatsoever, while threat of eternal damnation is coercion indeed, and incompatible with free will, even of the limited variety.avocationist_{December 21, 2008
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A few meta comments. I apologise for the delay in answering all the many comments above. It was past my bed time. I seem to be the lone voice of compatabilism at the moment so I hope you will all understand that I cannot respond to every comment. As I said early on - free will and compatabilism has spawned literally thousands of learned papers and hundreds of books. There is no way I can offer a complete account here. All I can try to do is demonstrate that the view is not trivially and obviously wrong. As I continue remember what compatibilism means. It means that free will is compatible with determinism. To make the case it is only necessary to show that there is nothing about free will (once we have agreed what it is!) that is incompatible with determinism. I hate overlong comments. So I had better get on with it. In #32 gpuccio you wrote: 1) The output must not be strictly and deterministically determined by the input. 2) There has to be a subjective perception that the I is “acting” and “choosing”. First. My guess is that you would be happy to modify (1) to something like: "1a) The output must not be strictly and deterministically determined by the input except for random fluctuations." Even the best computer is not completely determined by its input. There are hardware errors and when we move to quantum computers I guess they may include genuinely random number generators in the software. 1) or 1a) both make compatibilism false by definition. If you define free will as something that cannot be determined then of course it cannot be determined. Using that definition I would say that free will does not exist. I would then ask what evidence do you have that there is such a property in animals including humans? Indeed what would such evidence look like? If you concede that motives such as hunger are the result of external inputs (lack of food in this case). Then you are asking for choices to be made without motive. How would that be different from random fluctuations? (2) is interesting and deserves a long essay of its own. William Golding once wrote "free will cannot be debated but only experience like a colour or the taste of potatoes". But remember for us materialists a colour or the taste of potatoes are the owner's way of experiencing a particular brain state. So for us having this perception is compatible with determinism. I don't deny that humans (and some other animals) make decisions in a different way from computers and that drastically effects the experience of the decision maker.Mark Frank_{December 20, 2008
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-----dgosse: "I thought it was a little obvious to be overlooked for long. It does appear to have put a damper on the conversation though…" Pinpoint diagnoses are always in court. In any case, our points were not identical, so you definitely offered something fresh and useful. Things will probably crank up again soon.StephenB_{December 20, 2008
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I have always considered the term free will to be sort of nonsensical. A much better term is free choice IMO. As for whether or not the will is determined: is anyone seriously suggesting that it is not determined? Every effect has a cause. Vividvividbleau_{December 20, 2008
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Hi StephenB I must have missed that when I skimmed the comments earlier. I thought it was a little obvious to be overlooked for long. It does appear to have put a damper on the conversation though...dgosse_{December 20, 2008
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----dgosse: “coerce” implies action by another agent to compel your action, but in materialism there are no agents, only forces that compel, constrain, and coerce your actions, whether those forces have the appearance of ‘persons’ or not." Right. You have made a critical observation--a point that hearkens back to my earlier parody and which, when exploited, immediately sends the whole compatibilist house of cards tumbling down. But, my early refutation, if pressed, would seem to have taken all the fun out of the discussion that followed and made it anti-climactic. So I let it slide. Early knock outs are no fun.StephenB_{December 20, 2008
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The definition of compatabilism as defined by your friend, “the absence of coercion” depends upon the ambiguous use of the word "coercion." "coerce" implies action by another agent to compel your action, but in materialism there are no agents, only forces that compel, constrain, and coerce your actions, whether those forces have the appearance of 'persons' or not.dgosse_{December 20, 2008
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Mark --Liberty is freedom from constraint of various kinds. Which constraints did you have in mind? OK, so reject the definition that liberty is the freedom to choose. Point to ponder: if you accepted that definition is compatibilist position possible? With regard to constraints if you are constrained by law do you have liberty?tribune7_{December 20, 2008
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Mark: With your permission (I hope) I will take one phrase from your last post in the other thread to advance in the discussion, now that we have our definitions. You say: "I think the key to understanding (if not agreeing) with compatabilism is probably really realising that being able to predict a choice does not stop it being a choice." Well, I think here we have a good occasion to try the definition of free will I have proposed. First of all, let's take a specific model. I am tempted to use Dennett's thermostat, but OK, let's be less trivial let's transform it into a computer operating a software. The essence of the discussion remains the same, and we have the additional bonus of being in full AI context (while maybe a thermostat would leave somebody unsatisfied). Well. according to your above affirmation, I think we could agree that the computer operates out of necessity (we do not even have the uncomfortable quantum randomness here, after all this is not a quantum computer). And I can agree with you that, even in common language, the algorithm the computer is operating can be said to make "choices" (through conditional statements, for instance). We are after all in the situation of the thermostat "deciding" to control the temperature. Again, it should be clear that I have no objections that you call those things "choices". As I have told you, I am not attached to words in themselves. But I want to be sure that nobody fools me by a wrong use of words (see compatibilists). So, let's stay friends, and call those events "deterministic choices". So the question is: are those kind of choices an expression of free will, and therefore a proof of compatibilism (free will occurring together with absolute determinism)? Well, the answer is simple enough: if we take our previous definition of free will, certainly not. Indeed, the definition of free will gives us implicitly (but we will make it explicit now) a rule to assess if an event is possibly an expression of free will. According to the definition, in fact, we need two things to determine that free will is there: 1) The output must not be strictly and deterministically determined by the input. 2) There has to be a subjective perception that the I is “acting” and “choosing”. Well, it seems obvious enough to me that neither of those conditions is satisfied in you "deterministic choices". Indeed, 1) is certainly not satisfied because we have assumed that the computer works deterministically. And 2) is not satisfied because there is no subjective perception that an I is “acting” and “choosing” (indeed, unless you have data which I am not aware of, there is not even an I). So, as you can see, if and when we use words for what they really mean, truth is self-evident: if you have rigid determinism there can be no free will, and there is no escape to it. Substituting "deterministic choices" to the real concept of free will is only word play. IMO, that is all compatibilism is: an intellectual game, without any substance, based on a purposeful denial of the essence of empirical subjective experience, and on clever (but not "too" clever) word manipulation. Maybe I am wrong, but please try to show me why.gpuccio_{December 20, 2008
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Mark: Maybe I just wanted to anticipate all possible objections! :-) Anyway, I will try a summary for your convenience: “Free will”: A property of the conscious intelligent I which intervenes between the input and the output of information into and from the consciousness, producing an objectively observable result (the output is not strictly and deterministically determined by the input) and a subjective perception that the I is "acting" and "choosing". Even if always influenced by inner and outer restrictions, free will is an intimate property of consciousness, a constant inner space of freedom which can always express itself, in greater or smaller ways, in the “black box” between cognition and action. It is the source of all creativity and choice in human behavior.gpuccio_{December 20, 2008
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gpuccio, post [21] is very good. If only there were a place on this site we could put it for ease of future reference ;-)Barry Arrington_{December 20, 2008
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edit: I meant in Flew's "There is A God" oopsjpark320_{December 20, 2008
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----Mark Frank: "gpuccio - I asked for a definition not an essay! Your comments used to be comprehensible and concise. What happened?" Is there anything substantive in that definition that you object to other than its length?StephenB_{December 20, 2008
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Oooo... tempted to join the debate... but will resist.. or maybe I won't :P Very interesting though. A great book on this is Jonathan Edward's "Freedom of the Will" and I have a summary of his main points here: http://thepredestinedblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/jonathan-edwards-on-freedom-of-will.html I just want to agree with all the folks that say that are questioning what we mean by "freedom" and "will" Two relevant points Mr. Edwards takes is that 1) God can only do good, yet He has unconstrained free will. Also, Christians in heaven are unable sin, do they not have free will? These are 2 examples where the will is "constrained" to good yet perfectly free. 2) Basically, we need to look at our words "impossible" and "possible" in the context of the will. He is basically saying that we use the aforementioned terms usually in the context of the physical reality of the 4 dimensions (ie matter, space, and time). So it may be impossible for water to roll up hill according to physical laws, but can we even say it is impossible for humans to have free agency and have a God foreordain the results? We in fact do not know if our free agency that is outside of the 4 dimensions (which some have shown here is restricted anyway) is truly "impossible" with God's foreordination that is outside the 4 dimensions. Btw, this corrrelates very well with a non-materialist view of the mind (*nod* to Mrs. O'Leary Other interesting things to look at Anthony Flew's treatment of free will back in the day, though he said has changed his position in "There is No God" :( . Nonetheless it is still excellent for this discussionjpark320_{December 20, 2008
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Re #21 gpuccio - I asked for a definition not an essay! Your comments used to be comprehensible and concise. What happened? It may be my age but could you possibly precis that to one sentence?Mark Frank_{December 20, 2008
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"The compatibilist says that “free will” does not mean “the liberty to choose;” instead, says he, it means “the absence of coercion.” In other words, he says that so long as a choice is not coerced it is completely free even if it is utterly determined." But that really means is that the choice is driven from within, not without. Mario Beauregard and I dealt with that in The Spiritual Brain, discussing a materialist proposal for social reform that eliminates the concept of free will: " ... in a materialist account of the human, there is no self that controls and no self to control. As a result, ... proposed “science-based, effective and progressive policies” are not offered by a self to other selves, but driven by an object at other objects. (p. 117) That is the part that some people miss. Today's arguments against free will are usually arguments against the mind or the self. Millennia ago, some argued for determinism on a very different basis: Sophocles, the Greek playwright and author of Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus thought that Oedipus was fated to kill his father and marry his mother and suffer the consequences - not because he had no self but because the essence of human wisdom is learning to endure the fate we cannot change. A modern determinist would not, of course, concede that there is any human wisdom - there is merely a series of tricks that our selfish genes play on us in order to perpetuate themselves. Or, if that is not the Flavour of the Decade, the next one will be just as unlikely.O'Leary_{December 20, 2008
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Re #18 Liberty is freedom from constraint of various kinds. Which constraints did you have in mind?Mark Frank_{December 20, 2008
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gpuccio: Your definition of free will is good for me. So, Mark, that is the one I will assume.StephenB_{December 20, 2008
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Mark: Your definition of determinism is pretty good for me.gpuccio_{December 20, 2008
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Stephen, excuse me if I anticipate you, but I want to give it a try: "Free will": A property of conscious intelligent beings which denies any rigid connection between input and output of information into and from the consciousness, and which is characterized by some form of "causal intervention" of the subject (the I) on the output of consciousness, both objectively observable and subjectively perceived by the intervening I. Free will does not mean absolute freedom: the influences present in the input, in the context, and in the existing mind with all its inertial factors and structures, are certainly real. But they are not sufficient to explain the output. In other words, the actions of the I are vastly influenced by outer and inner factors, but never completely determined. Moreover, free will is in no way strictly linked to the objective results of action: once the action is outputted by consciousness, it can be modified by any external factor independent on the agent. That does not change the fact that free will has been exercised in outputting the action. In other words, the agent is never completely free, neither in his response to input not in his outer implementation of action: the agent is always heavily influenced and limited by external reality. Still, free will is a constant inner space of freedom which can always express itself, in greater or smaller ways, in the "black box" between cognition and action. Free will is inwardly and intuitively connected to the concept of responsibility. Indeed, no concept of responsibility could even exist without our intuitive certainty of free will in ourselves and (inferentially) in others. But there is no easy way to define responsibility in an universal way. As free will is essentially a very intimate property of consciousness, so also responsibility is very intimate and mysterious, although for social necessities it is often, and rightfully, transformed in a set of outer rules. To sum up, free will is an intimate property of consciousness: the intuition of a perceiving I and of an acting I within ourselves are the double real basis of any representation we have of ourselves and of the external world. But free will is also objectively observable, and is the source of all creativity and choice in human behavior.gpuccio_{December 20, 2008
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#19 No problem. I am happy with the one in Wikipedia. "Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition and behavior, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences" I might add that quantum theory suggests that in some cases there may be a random element. It makes little difference to the argument. Your turn ...Mark Frank_{December 20, 2008
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