Let’s assume that there’s no God, supernatural, metaphysical anything.
Determinism, bla bla bla. The most common refutation of this argument is in the field of quantum fluctuation, where there are particles that follow random movements. Since they are random and aren’t determined, people say that they can cause free will.
However, they’re random. Not free-willed, just random. And I, personally, would rather be determined than just empowered by some random stuff.
But, either way, no free will. And discounting the presence of any metaphysical or spiritual aspects, how can people account for this thing if it has no basis.
I think you must evaluate definitions, Shaneytiger. In a certain sense of either/or, there’s either freewill (sometimes called Self Determination) and predestination. In one sense you could reject determinism while also rejecting freewill, and I think that has a certain logic. For whatever reason we tend to view this as an either/or while that analysis may be a false dichotomy.
There is an appeal in this repudiation of predetermination- who wants to live their life knowing all choices are predetermined? But just because those choices aren’t predetermined doesn’t automatically mean they’re “self chosen.” That is to say, just because there’s a random element in outcome doesn’t mean we necessarily chose it. That’s such a simple yet sophisticated idea that that everyone seems to grasp it.
BTW, I have to add that this isn’t a repudiation of the concept of freewill either. Scientists know little more about the nature of consciousness today than Plato knew 2,500 years ago. This “ghost in the machine” could have spiritual or quantum properties that we simply don’t understand. Frankly we don’t even scientifically comprehend the “mind/body interface” in a meaningful way.
That’s what I’m saying. It undermines the concept of determinism to an extent, but doesn’t change anything about the state of free-will; it just makes the deterministic not-free-will turn into randomness not-free-will.
I never have understand the concept of hard-vs.-soft determinism. I only know of one kind, so I can’t respond to the different levels of self-control you are talking about.
We don’t understand the nature of consciousness, but is that because it has a spiritual side (what you might be inferring, I don’t know) or merely that we haven’t created sufficiently powerful technology and theories that actually match what’s going on?
Saying that we know little more than Plato… well, I don’t know. It’s like having a pool that’s covered with fog, and there’s no wind. Plato could only see the first few feet of it, because he wasn’t able to blow away the fog. We, however, brought along a fan and blew away a lot more than Plato did, so now we can see the first twenty feet, and to get some more visibility we have to get more powerful fans. But to say we saw only a little more than Plato when we don’t know how big the pool is is wrong, because the pool could be 25 feet long, or 50, or 1,000,000,000.
It’s not the spiritual side alone that complicates things; consciousness is hard to define, let alone study. It doesn’t seem to reside in any one part of the brain, although it does appear to reside in the brain. We can observe how damage to physical structures in the brain affect behavior, it’s less clear how consciousness drives the body. Like a shadow on the wall we can only “see” consciousness by observing its effects- if it’s a real “thing” we can’t find it in the brain.
The science and technology of today is far more advanced than in Platos day, but it’s interesting that his idea of dualism and a clean mind/body split still holds a lot of sway today. That’s a challenge for those trying to understand consciousness. As a materialist I somewhat agree with you that we will get a better understanding of it, but the problem is a knowledge claims problem almost more than an “information problem.” That is to say, some researchers feel it’s not that we don’t know enough, it’s that there’s a “knowledge gap” that stymies our efforts to get at the “truth” of consciousness.
(begin excerpt)
So, you might be saying, “Well wait a minute, what about quantum mechanics? I know enough contemporary physical theory to know it’s not really like that. It’s really a probabilistic theory; There’s room; It’s loose; It’s not deterministic, and that’s going to enable us to understand free will.” But, if you look at the details, it’s not really going to help because, what happens is, you have some very small quantum particles, and their behavior is, apparently, a bit random; They sort of swerve. Their behavior is absurd, in the sense that it’s unpredictable and we can’t understand it based on anything that came before. It just does something out of the blue according to a probabilistic framework. But, is that going to help with freedom? I mean, should our freedom just be a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That starts to seem like it’s worse. I’d rather be a gear in a big deterministic physical machine than just some random swerving.
(end excerpt)
You attempt to discredit quantum mechanics with a naive understanding of the theory. In the formalism of quantum mechanics, the state of a system at a given time is described by a complex wave function, and more generally, elements of a complex vector space. This abstract mathematical object allows for the calculation of probabilities of outcomes of concrete experiments.
Note: Probabilities not Possibilities. Random = Bye Bye
Orthodox Quantum Theory coupled with a more than forty year old view forwarded by John von Neumann describes the notion of free will quite directly as it relates to QT. Henry Stapp is the primary supporter of the modern day version of this theory and has a wealth of papers at: www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html
Your brain will undergo some heavy lifting … warning.