Why the nervous laugh? 
Why anything at all in a no free will world where the laws of matter command everything that we think, feel, say and do?
Then this part:
Next up: connecting the dots between the very existence of matter itself and emojis.
The laws of matter command us to think, feel, say and do as a result of our heredity and environment. We have no control over what we find preferable, giving us no free will whatsoever.
Yes!!! It gives us more knowledge about the human condition, just like all the other discoveries that have helped mankind.
The laws of our nature can be called God or a higher power, or whatever name you want to give it. The teleological component might be to fulfill our potential in service to others. Ironically, most religions preach free will, making man responsible for all evil, and God responsible for all good.
Your logic is faulty. Just because philosophers and scientists and theologians have been grappling with this this profound mystery now for thousands of years DOES NOT MEAN it can never be solved. You are putting the cart before the horse.
No, seriously.
The Dogmatic Determinism of Daniel Dennett
Eyal Mozes
BOOK REVIEW: Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves.
at The Atlas Society
Yes, but in regard to both there are many different [and ofttimes conflicting] assessments. There are the God World folks who do bring everything back to God. And the God World folks who manage to reconcile an omniscient God with human autonomy. Or the Deists who posit a God who created us…but then just left it at that.
Same with the No God folks. There are the hardcore determinists and then the compatibilists. And all of the many profoundly problematic ways in which the function of human brain matter can be construed in regard to both the “internal” components of the self and the “external” components. Where does one end and the other begin?
And even Ayn Rand herself was in the dark in regard to this quandary:
Although she would never have admitted it, I suppose.
Just out of curiosity, any Objectivists here care to take a stab at what she might have opined? The first John Galt invented matter?
Right, like science itself has an explanation regarding how biological matter came into existence here on planet Earth in order to “somehow” evolve into us.
It still doesn’t, right?
Daniel Dennett is Wrong About Free Will
by Daniel Miessler
The part where things that are already tricky get trickier still. We don’t know – can’t know? – if the murderers’ brains compel them to murder “beyond their control”. That depends on whether our own brains wholly compel us to think about determinism only as we must.
But if – click – we do have free will, what about the part where it is clearly the case that, existentially, some of us will live lives making it far more likely that at least in some respects we will be less able to control ourselves in regard to harming others.
Instead, the legal system often just sweeps that part under the rug. Think Anatole France: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
How about all of us here? Can we finally agree on the precise philosophical definition/meaning of free will so that there will be no more confusion regarding what we are talking about when confronting thinks like Mary aborting Jane.
By all means, someone create a poll comprised of all the different ways in which to understand free will.
We’ll just assume that in creating it, you had free will.
It is not as simple as that. The term “free will” is used in more than one way. You are using it the way incompatibilists use it, to mean “the ability to make decisions that are not fully determined by something in the past”. But compatibilists use it in a different way and what that means is that when a compatibilist uses the term “free will” and says that free will exists, he is NOT talking about the same thing as you do. It’s like John saying “X exists” to mean “Horses exist” and Peter disagreeing by saying “X does not exist” to mean “Unicorns do not exist”. The two camps are talking past each other. It’s a horrible mess. And everything you said so far suggests to me that you believe that compatibilists are claiming that libertarian free will exists ( which is not true. ) Maybe you don’t but that’s the impression that I get that I cannot shake off. You have to clarify that in order for the conversation to move forward.
You already know this but I consider Lessans’s proof that libertarian free will does not exist to be no proof at all. It’s a pretty bad argument. But then, I don’t even know why he has to prove its non-existence. Shouldn’t he first prove that whether or not libertarian free will exists is a relevant question? If it’s an irrelevant one, we shouldn’t bother answering it.
When you put it that way, you’re doomed to be misunderstood, as you already have been, on multiple occasions.
Most people will understand the above to mean that noone can make you eat pizza if you decide not to eat it. But obviously, other people can force you to eat pizza even though you don’t want to eat it. All they have to do to is to force it down your throat. But that’s NOT what you’re actually saying, you made it clear in the past.
What you’re actually saying is that, when YOU choose to do something, it’s always something that YOU chose to do and not someone else. In the above case, it wasn’t YOU who caused your body to consume pizza but OTHER people. When you put it that way, what you’re saying becomes clear; it becomes clear that your statement is a banal truth that is true by definition.
And this is yet another statement of yours that is doomed to be misunderstood. What you’re actually saying is that nothing in the past can make you choose something other than what you’ll end up choosing. Which is, again, trivially true. However, the definition of the word “determinism” does not imply the opposite of that.
Freedom: An Impossible Reality by Raymond Tallis
This issue we consider ultimate human realities as Raymond Tallis has the intention of proving free will.
Book Review
Jonathan Head
But what does this really resolve? How do we connect the dots between intentionality as a “philosophical jargon term” and how “for all practical purposes” we should understand our own existential, day-to-day intentions?
And then the part where it is our own material brain itself that is used to define the meaning of “agency”. After all, what is it “about” the human brain as matter that evolved biologically from brainless/lifeless matter here on planet Earth that enabled it to invent a word like “agency”?
Really, how is it all that different from a “soul”? Can philosophers or scientists or theologians pinpoint where in the brain the soul or the agent can be found?
But then this part:
They observe a landscape just as we do. But how we observe it is [or can be] very, very different. And certainly in part because what we observe includes the “is/ought” world. There’s the way a landscape [or a set of circumstances] appears to us, and all of our different reactions regarding whether, instead, it should appear some other way.
The “soul” or the “agent” then. And, in particular, from my frame of mind – click – in a No God world.
In “some way” we have acquired the capacity to opt for alternative behaviors.
But, really, beyond him taking the same leap we all do here – “I just know deep down inside that this is true” – how exactly does he go about demonstrating this?
There’s a big part of me that believes the same. But then I keep coming back around to the human brain being just more matter and matter interacting with other matter in accordance with the laws of matter…physics, chemistry, mathematics.
Or:
“There are four fundamental forces at work in the universe: the strong force, the weak force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force.”
So, where does the human brain fit in here?
Or is biological matter the key to it. Living matter. With or without a God, the God?
Instead, it’s straight back up into the realm of philosophical arguments – philosophical arguments – here:
And, here, of course, all one need do is to believe it.
With or without a “condition”.
It’s really not a horrible mess if you go by an accurate definition. All the compatibilists are doing is changing the definition of what free will means which is causing immense confusion. Knowing that will is not free, they are trying to not have cognitive/dissonance when it comes to the ability to blame and punish. It’s easy. Just change the definition. They qualify what constitutes free will. How can some people have free will and others not, if we are talking about whether we could have done otherwise. Could you have done otherwise and not have done otherwise? It’s a complete contradiction. Having a choice where you don’t have a loaded gun to your head does not grant anyone free will.
He didn’t have to distinguish between libertarian free will and compatibilist free will to prove that we do not have any kind of free will as it relates to the debate over free will versus determinism. The verdict is in.
I have given people the first three chapters that clearly explains why this is an important point in relation to this discussion. Why? Because the problem that people are having with determinism is the belief something other than us is CAUSING us to do what we do, without our consent. This is false and it has major implications for understanding that this is not what determinism means. Nothing can make us do anything against or will. If you can accept that, we can move forward.
We are not talking about someone forcing you to do something where you are overpowered. That is not your will; that is someone else’s will, where you have no physical control.
Thank you for clarifying. The author always said if anyone can explain his discovery better, please come forward.
It is not trivially true. It is, in fact, front and center of this debate. The past does not exist so the past cannot cause anything. We make choices based on our memory IN THE PRESENT. This has created so much confusion. If determinism, according to the present definition, means that the past causes…then by definition free will means that nothing causes. The problem is in the definition, which has prevented the reconciliation of these two thought processes and, consequently, has not allowed us to open the door to this new world.
The Dogmatic Determinism of Daniel Dennett
Eyal Mozes
BOOK REVIEW: Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves.
at The Atlas Society
Back again to the part where Dennett reconciles his own understanding of determinism with a definition he gives to any word at all. How is he responsible for defining his own concept of free will such that it is different from how a Libertarian and an Objectivist would define it? From their frame of mind, they do “somehow” possess free will and, that being the case, they are able to sit back and “think through” what free will means given that they can opt to come up with different definitions but are able of their own volition to define it in a manner they construe to be the most rational definition.
As for “redefin[ing] it so that it no longer involves a free choice among alternatives and can thus be made compatible with the mechanist/reductionist model of the universe”, is that what he is doing?
This makes no sense to me. If the human brain tasked with defining words does so given that the brain itself is an essential component of a mechanistic/reductionist material universe where – how – does the compatibilism part fit into it such that he can be said to bear responsibility for his own definition?
I clearly keep missing something here regarding this line of thinking.
In fact, this is, in part, my own reaction. In other words, those determinists who are not willing to go all the way out to the very end of the limb here when it comes to responsibility. In particular, moral responsibility. “Somehow” we’ve got to be involved when it comes to things like crime and punishment. We can’t live in a world where genocide and child abuse and rape and murder are inherently embedded in “the only possible reality”.
The Libertarians/Objectivists merely embrace all the more the assumption that we simply must have free will here. They are no more able to demonstrate it empirically/scientifically than Dennett but like the rest of us they imagine how ghastly human reality might be construed if all of the terrible things that happen to us really were “beyond our control”.
Thus…
Exactly. No free will, and all of that becomes human brains creating the “psychological illusion” of morality and moral responsibility.
Then back to the part that ever escapes me…
Again, as though in redefining it that too is not just another manifestation of the illusion such that Dennett’s brain “somehow” compelled him to make determinism compatible with moral responsibility.
Okay – click – this might make sense to some but not to me. If something is worth wanting it doesn’t make our wanting it any more a manifestation of free will. At least not as the Libertarians/Objectivists construe it.
How do you know it is compatibilists, and not incompatibilists, who changed the definition?
Considering that the concept of libertarian free will is a useless one, having no purpose at all, other than to confuse, I find it more likely that it is incompatibilists who changed the definition.
You say that it’s the other way around. Based on what?
There is a push by people such as Sam Harris and Yuvel Noah Harari to portray humans as being slaves by nature. I find it much more likely that a group of sinister people decided to invent the concept of libertarian free will precisely in order to promote fatalism. By claiming that libertarian free will and determinism clash – a true statement, of course – and by exploting the fact that everyone considers the universe to be deterministic, they were able to guide people into becoming fatalists. It’s a very clever trick. You don’t have to say anything that is false, you just have to exploit human psychology ( namely, say something that is true but in a way that will make people reach conclusions that you want them to reach. )
They are merely saying that whether or not someone “could have done otherwise” isn’t as relevant as whether or not they can change in a way that can prevent similar problems from occurring in the future.
To blame something or someone is to claim that that something or someone can change in a way that can solve the problem. When your computer stops working, say by randomly shutting down, you will blame that problem on the computer itself. You won’t defend the computer by saying “Oh, but the computer is a deterministic machine that had no choice but to follow the rules of nature; it had no choice but to shut down.” It’s silly. Instead, what we do is we say that there is a way to fix the problem by changing the computer e.g. by replacing its power supply unit.
It’s the same with people. Someone kills someone else and you wonder what the hell is going on; what has to be done to make sure the same problem does not happen again in the future. Perhaps he needs a treatment of some sort; maybe his freedom has to be limited in certain ways. That’s what it means to blame that person. I understand that people don’t like to be blamed but that’s a different issue.
When you make statements such as “We do not have any kind of free will”, my belief that you do not really understand the difference between the two types of free will is reinforced. But then, maybe you’re merely expressing yourself in a poor way. Perhaps all you want to say is that Lessans didn’t have to distinguish between the two types of free will. If that’s the case, then I agree with you. But I never said such a thing. What I said is that he didn’t prove the non-existence of libertarian free will.
What you’re actually claiming is that the statement “Every physical object occupying some portion of space at point in time t is fully determined by a physical object occupying some portion of space at some prior point in time” implies that we have no choice.
That’s not true.
When you say that “Past does not exist”, all your’re saying is that the term “past” does not refer to something in the present. It’s yet another seriously misleading statement that expresses nothing but something that is trivially true. We all know that the past is not the present. But more importantly, in no way, shape or form does that mean that what happened in the past cannot be the cause of what’s taking place in the present. I am afraid that there’s a degree of equivocation involved in your and Lessan’s logic, the equivocated term being “exist”. If something does not exist, it cannot be the cause of anything. That is true. So if past does not exist, you claim, it follows the past cannot be the cause of anything. That does not follow. Everything that existed in the past once existed in the present, and so, it had the capacity to cause things to happen. So things in the past can and do partially or completely determine the future.
Because there is one definition of what determinism means. It means we do not have the free will to do other than what we do, once we do it. Therefore, we could not have done otherwise. To then say that before an act, a person has free will if he doesn’t have a gun to his head does nothing to prove that a person could have done otherwise given the same exact conditions. It’s just a way to get rid of the angst about determinism and keep the status quo.
Based on what free will means in this debate. There are many other definitions for the word “free”, which has caused great confusion. I am only talking about one thing: could a person have done otherwise, and the answer is no. This doesn’t mean a person can’t change if given a new set of conditions. I am not sure what people are so afraid of.
It is obvious that people can change for the better if their circumstances change. But this is not what compatibilists are saying. They are saying that before a choice is made, a person has the free will to make the “right” choice, and if he fails, he should be held accountable and be punished according to the law. This is no different than libertarian free will as far as the belief that punishment is the only answer as a deterrent. Maybe compatibilists have a little more compassion, but I don’t see much of a difference.
Using that analogy, you don’t punish the computer. You will try to fix it, like you said. The brain is not always repaired like a broken power supply unit by punishing. It has only been a partial deterrent at best. Some progressive prisons use rehabilitation rather than punishment, and it has the best track record for lowering recidivism. This is not about making excuses for people. It’s by changing the environment so that people don’t want to make choices that hurt others.
You are basing your understanding on the world as it is. Obviously, if someone harms others, he has to be taken off the streets. I am only talking about prevention, before the fact.
When nothing external is preventing us from making a choice, we can call that “free”. But the minute we choose between meaningful differences, we are no longer free because we can only go in one direction, hence our will cannot be free. This is an immutable law.
That is not what I’m saying. The fact that we only have the present only means, as far as this knowledge goes, that nothing from the past causes our actions… which implies that we can be forced to do something against our will. In actuality, we are always making choices in the present. This is relevant when it comes to the word “cause” which has confused everyone. This has nothing to do with the fact that we don’t have free will. We don’t have free will because we can only move in the direction of greater preference or greater satisfaction from one moment to the next. We can’t move in the other direction, toward less satisfaction when an alternative offering greater satisfaction (in our eyes) is available. It’s an impossibility.
What can I say. You are mistaken. The past does refer to something in the present if one’s memory serves them. There is a huge distinction between saying the past (something that is no longer exists) caused my actions and saying I considered my options in the present. The past did not cause. Not only is that false, but it’s not linear where we can backtrack and find an exact cause for an action in many cases. What we do is often based on a combination of many factors.
I didn’t say the past cannot be the cause of what is taking place in the present, but it’s not coming directly from the past. Remove memory and we have no conception of the past. People that have amnesia only experience the present, which is why electric shock treatments often help. They don’t ruminate over something they don’t remember. If the past actually existed, it could bypass memory. But it can’t because the past is inextricably linked to our memory centers. That’s more proof that the past cannot cause.
What you are saying as far as the past once existed as the present is true, and it’s also true that the past had the capacity to cause things to happen in the present, but when you talk in terms of the past causing the present, it’s a problem.
Daniel Dennett is Wrong About Free Will
by Daniel Miessler
How is the bottom line here not this: that none of us are actually able to settle any of this beyond the assumption that “somehiow” human brains did acquire autonomy. And that the arguments we propose here do involve volition? We can’t demonstrate it scientifically perhaps but then those who argue against us can’t demonstrate what they believe either.
Sure, if we do have free will as the Libertarians argue there are any number of reasons for wanting it. But noting that “deep down” we “just know” that we do want it [for any reason] doesn’t make the wanting itself autonomous.
Okay, but how does he himself demonstrate that what he does believe about free will, he believes in such a manner it is compatible with determinism as others encompass it? Those suggesting instead that everything we believe about anything at all we believe only because we were never able to not believe it.
Same with Harris. Where do they draw the line here? How much does determinism as they understand it encompass in regard to all that we think, feel, say and do? If everything then it must include everything that they have ever written or ever said about determinism, free will and compatibilism.
It’s that “spooky” gap here that I can never pin down. No, we do not possess free will but yes, we do.
Wrong thread
Freedom: An Impossible Reality by Raymond Tallis
This issue we consider ultimate human realities as Raymond Tallis has the intention of proving free will.
Book Review
Jonathan Head
This is the crux of it, right? It’s not our heart or liver or kidney that has intentions, it’s our brain. But how is the brain not composed of matter just as the other organs are? And do or do not the other organs function autonomically? Sure, you can point out the obvious: that the brain is our most extraordinary organ by far. But how does that necessarily establish there must be something in it that takes it “beyond” a “physical entity”.
Indeed, that’s the whole point of inventing the Gods, right? There is this “metaphysical” entity in us. The soul. But No God and how exactly do either scientists or philosophers go about noting, demonstrating empirically, experientially, experimentally how “I” intentionally chooses this instead of that?
Exactly.
Here, from my point of view, it comes down to whether or not in “finding it” he does so such that it is not encompassed in just a world of words. Deducing it into existence the way many theologians deduce God into existence. Worse, define it into existence.
You tell me from here on out.
So, is this or is this not just another intellectual contraption the truth of which depends entirely on agreeing or disagreeing with him in regard to what these words mean when put in this particular order. How are the “habits of nature” in regard to all of the other conscious animals around us – instincts, drives, biological imperatives – different from our own? Clearly, we are remarkably different when it comes to “intentions”. But how does this establish that the human brain intends autonomously?
You show me where the “virtual space outside of nature” is parked in our brains.
Again, exactly. If nature is the embodiment of the laws of matter and we are just the end most evolution of nature itself [on this [planet], sure, maybe there is a “metaphysical” explanation for human intention that does not include God. But beyond the scientific method employed by the brain scientists to root this out, what can philosophers contribute to the mystery much beyond “thought up” arguments. Arguments thought up be the brain itself.
The Dogmatic Determinism of Daniel Dennett
Eyal Mozes
BOOK REVIEW: Daniel C. Dennett, Freedom Evolves.
at The Atlas Society
And, indeed, here I am right now intuitively, viscerally feeling precisely that. I “just know” that even though tonight I might have a dream in which I am posting something here entirely as a result of my brain autonomically creating these dream realities, once I wake up my brain hands over the controls to me and – presto! – “somehow” I become autonomous.
And of course had Ayn Rand been confronted with what she has no definitive understanding of regarding this…
…she would no doubt just shrug her own ignorance off as so many here do: so what?!
In other words, only a fool would actually imagine that Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged simply because her brain compelled her to autonomically. Then going all the way back to…to what exactly? The human brain is matter but matter came into existence…how exactly? Also: why exactly? And how exactly did mindless matter acquire biological life? And how exactly did biological matter acquire consciousness that evolved into us.
Well, it just did!
See how it works? Because we do observe and perceive things introspectively that proves we have free will! And the fact that the brain and the brain alone creates our perceptions and observations and introspection when we dream, well, that’s just different.
Somehow.
As for Dennett “making the reality of free will depend on our need for morality rather than the other way around”, you tell me.
After all, in a wholly determined universe as some understand it, our need for morality is no less “beyond our control”.
Dennet… still competing for the pseudo-intellectual of the year award I see.
Daniel Dennett is Wrong About Free Will
by Daniel Miessler
Again:
“Indeterminism is the idea that events (or certain events, or events of certain types) are not caused, or are not caused deterministically.” wiki
Of course, in regard to the very, very large, events are caused all the time. And we have explored that through, among other things, physics and chemistry and biology. And though re Hume we agree not to confuse seemingly endless correlations with definitive causes, no one expects the either/or world to go away anytime soon.
On the other hand, in regard to the world of the very, very small, things often become considerably more problematic.
Then the part where we grapple to understand the extent to which the human brain itself is wholly subject to the laws of matter. The part where whether we take credit for something or not, we still have no way in which to know for certain if we were never able to or not to.
Then the “randomness gambit” embedded in things like the Benjamin Button Syndrome. But can anything ever be truly random in regard to human interactions? There are so many variables involved, we are always only able to grasp so many of them. Like with the weather and the butterfly flapping its wing. Only with human beings, the complexities can only become all the more…mind-boggling?
Then, whatever you might possibly make of this:
Same thing?
Whatever you do make of it…were you ever able to opt freely to think about it longer and of your own volition come to a completely different conclusion?
We. Just. Don’t. Know.
Daniel Dennett is Wrong About Free Will
by Daniel Miessler
Randomness in quantum physics is a theory only, and has nothing to do with the fact that we have no free will. Even if there was randomness in the universe, this does not negate man’s inability to move in a direction that is the antithesis of his very nature.
You keep bringing the idea that we don’t know if we were never able not to. Of course, if will is not free (which is a fact), then whatever we say and do we could never have not said and done. It has been proven conclusively, that will is not free, whether people have a hard time with it or not, and even if their disbelief is something they could not not believe, which is further proof that will is not free. It’s all part of the deterministic process, so how, then, can we take credit for what we could not not have said or done?
Because you are thinking linear, as if the past is prescriptive, which it is not. We live and die in the present. We are given options in the present, and we choose in the present. You don’t get this, or you don’t care to get this. You are like Unwrong in this respect. The word “cause” has confused this entire debate because the past does not cause anything. We choose based on preference. We cannot not choose on preference. One option has to go, therefore, we can only move in one direction rendering free will a realistic mirage.
You were never able not to do based on what you knew at the time. We make choices sometimes from false information. This changes nothing as far as determinism is concerned.
But. We. Do.
Freedom: An Impossible Reality by Raymond Tallis
This issue we consider ultimate human realities as Raymond Tallis has the intention of proving free will.
Book Review
Jonathan Head
This is basically true for almost everything we do. We do things in a way that no other matter really even approaches. Even among other conscious animals, they seem to go about the business of living on automatic pilot. They are driven or compelled by instinct. Some literally right from the start. How amazed we often are watching a nature documentary in which some species are born and immediately they are entirely on their own. “Somehow” their brains are already hardwired to “know” what to do. That, to me, is almost as mind-boggling as us. “Somehow” nature itself managed to create a fully functioning creature with absolutely no need for the years of indoctrination that we go through…utterly helpless and dependent at birth.
But surely given all of the thought that we put into doing any number of things as adults, there must be a “free agent” in there somewhere. How and why that is the case we may never fully understand. But there it is, that indisputable assumption that “I” am able to opt among different behaviors.
That’s basically my point as well. Just because we’re able to convince ourselves that we are in fact a “free agent” doesn’t mean that “somehow” nature itself didn’t bring that frame of mind into existence as well. If nature can evolve into snakes able to fully function at birth, why not what we can do? Science may well be but the most dazzling aspects of the laws of nature.
Still…
Matter evolving from the Big Bang into something able to invent Smart Phones and the Internet and philosophy forums and threads like this one?
Hmm, maybe there is a God.
In any event, Mr. Tallis, how do you connect the dots between your own conclusions and this…
Maybe in your next Philosophy Now column.