So what does it mean to do something intentionally?
To assign a high value to that future at the moment you metaphysically commit to it. Not some time beforehand, by filing an official “intention” in your brain, as if you have to give yourself permission to do things. Free will occurs in the NOW.
You get up from your chair, walk out of the door, and you can turn left or right (unless you decide to just stand there). There comes a specific present moment when you metaphysically commit to left or right, and start walking. This is a single act. You are trying to claim that in order for this to be a free decision, you need to have previously “intended” to do this. This step is being inserted in order to enforce your deterministic assumptions, and for no other reason. “Intentions”, as you mean them, do not exist. We do not arrive at the door, think to ourselves “I intend to walk right” and then start walking right because we’ve given ourselves permission to do so. That’s nonsense.
When I say that I intend to watch a movie I usually say it before I watch it, not when I am already watching it. But anyway, how do I create this intention/commitment? If it just pops into my head, then it doesn’t seem like I created it with my free will, it is just something that occurred to me. In order to create the intention/commitment with my free will I would need to create it intentionally, that is, with an intention to create the intention.
In order to create the intention/commitment with my free will I would need to create it intentionally, that is, with an intention to create the intention.
And you can’t see anything wrong with this? You are trapped in a hall of mirrors. It is the free will version of a dualistic homonculus. A little man inside your head looking out of your eyes, and another little man inside that little man’s head, looking out of his eyes…
Take the mirror away. There is just an act. Get rid of the first “intention” and the infinite regress disappears. It’s just a non-computable valuation, and that is all.
Well, there is the act of my watching a movie and there is my intention/commitment to watch it. They are not the same thing. I could be watching the movie also without an intention, just lying on the couch and the movie comes up unexpectedly. But removing an infinite regress of intentions won’t give you free will. It just gives you an intention or an act that occurs to you.
You just called Mijin out, quite correctly, for unjustifiably psychoanalyzing you. You aren’t doing that here, but your ascribing litewave’s motivation is as unjustified.
That sounds like you’re wandering aimlessly. You end up where you end up, not paying attention as you walk, maybe because you have a lot on your mind. Or maybe you’re a zen walker.
I don’t think that’s what litewave is talking about. Permission has nothing to do with it. If you had not intended to walk right, you wouldn’t have. When you lifted your foot, you knew which way it was going to go, because you intended to go somewhere. And when you arrived, you weren’t surprised at where you were, because that’s where you intended to end up. You didn’t say, “That’s odd. Why am I here? I intended to go to the corner store for a Snickers.”
For abstract topics which are not physical or material, reasonable arguments are what philosophical conclusions can be based on.
“reasonableness” is not something which is each for their own. That would be an attitude of the sophists. So your idea of reasonableness seems to be that of the sophists, which has nothing to do with the grounds of genuine philosophical conclusions.
Yes, this is the case for free will. It doesn’t tell us anything about whether it refers to anything real or not.
Free will isn’t denied, because you are using the word, and so am I. But it is an empty word which has no meaning or relevance to consciousness or minds of humans. People have been doing things and making decisions for billions of years without having to worry about or know free will. It is only when the Christian authority has taken over the power, free will was imposed to the society and populations in the society for the control and punishment of the folks.
It can also mislead on the true nature of human consciousness and actions by framing and introducing something totally unnecessary and non existent problems.
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It indeed doesn’t hold at all times, only being applicable to measurements. But volition is a measurement of mind by the body, so yea, Born rule applies.
It is established that it is empirically probabilistic, which is different from random. We can predict the probability of X vs Y. To illustrate: all the isotopes having different half lives is empirical probability, not randomness.
Information cannot be conveyed via quantum measurement given the empirical probabilistic nature of QM.
Quantum theory has not been proved. It would be a theorem if it had. But the inability of a human to steer a quantum measurement to a particular value is not an open question in quantum theory.
Demonstrating such an ability would falsify the theory.
Yes, but your blog posits MWI until brains came along, which is hard to do since the universe would be in superposition of having a thinking thing and not, and MWI is a local interpretation and apparently your idea is not since Earth collapses the whole universe, not just its future light cone.
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I’ve been away a couple of days and I see there has been ~80 posts, so apologies if this treads old ground.
But anyway, the three responses to me are all basically saying the same thing – that if decisions are non-computable, that means we are free:
This is why I always like to ground these things in reality – coffee or tea, or the worst mistake of one’s life (in my case, where I went to college). I made these decisions, including bad decisions for reasons. How, from my point of view, does it make any difference if there’s non-computable activity within that? Does it erase some of the reasons? Does it make me know extra things? And if there are differences, are they not simply random from my perspective?
I’m not sure if anyone here is religious but one of the most common invocations of free will is in a theological context. In that context, does being non-computable mean god is not culpable for anything that happens? Or does free will continue to not make any sense in that context either?
Basically “non-computable” is a get out of jail card that works as long as you don’t ask how it helps.
Honestly, this topic is incredibly frustrating. Because, IMO, it’s really simple that when you question the basic framing of the free will debate – “Determinism vs Freedom” – it falls apart pretty easy. But a lot of people are unwilling to question the premise.
So we have people holding up “non-computable” as something that supposedly gives us freedom, simply because they believe it destroys determinism.
It doesn’t help, and no such help was needed in the first place.
I’m not talking about whether or not it makes a difference to you. I’m asking what it is not free from if it is non-computable.
Can’t help you. I’m an atheist.
Perhaps you could give us some guidance. If it falls apart pretty easy, I assume it’s just a couple points that are not terribly difficult to communicate. What is the first point to be made in questioning the basic framing?
Yes. The latter doesn’t exist.
This discussion is going nowhere. You believe in some unneccesary concept of an ontologically real “intention” which is necessary for willl to be free but conveniently also entails that determinism is true.
Since nothing I am saying is making any difference, I don’t think there is any purpose in further discussion.
But that doesn’t mean there is a thing, called an “intention”, which has to exist before we freely choose to act. “Intentional” just means “deliberately chosen”, not “officially sanctioned beforehand by something called an “intention””. There is no “act of intending”. There is no sequence of thinking “I intend to walk left”, followed by “now I am going to act on that intention”. You just decide.
If you think a word doesn’t refer to anything, then you are denying the thing that other people think it refers to. The term “free will” isn’t what matters. What matter is whether or not it is real.
No, volition is not a measurement of mind by the body. I have not said anything that implies that. In 2PC, a “measurement” is a micro-collapse, which is part of the specious present. It is the resolution of phase 1 possibility into phase 2 actuality, not a measurement of the mind by the body.
But that is just one example. That does not establish that the rule always holds. It could hold most of the time, and be breached only in specific circumstances.
Information cannot be conveyed via quantum measurement given the empirical probabilistic nature of QM.
I already said that I agree that information cannot be conveyed, but I am consistently denying you second claim. We have not established that the Born Rule always holds. That is a metaphysical assumption, not an empirical fact.
It has not been proved that the Born Rule always holds. It really hasn’t…
I have already explained why this isn’t possible. PSI research consistently produces borderline results. This is empirically consistent with exactly the theory I am describing: it works for believers, but does not work for skeptics.
As for a theorem, there is a metaphysical version of just this. It is related to Conway & Kochen’s Free Will Theorem, and is effectively an extension of it:
Free Will | Two-Phase Cosmology
It is a radically new idea. But so was Relativity and so was Quantum Mechanics. Major paradigm shifts always look alien to people familiar with thinking inside the old one.
It is not matter for, referring to anything or not being real.
It refers to something, but not more than saying you are responsible for your own actions and decisions.
If you reflect and think clearly, in daily life no one really says that their actions or decisions are based on free will. They say a lot more detailed and realistic reasons for their actions and decisions.
It is only in the discussions of morality or legal matters, free will comes up as issues, which indicates it is just a jargon for directing responsibility to someone who made decisions or committed certain actions.
There doesn’t seem to be any more implication or meanings to the jargon than that.
It is still a problem. We are not saying there is no problem with the jargon. It would be an interesting point to discuss, why the misunderstandings happened.
Knowing a decision was a free decision does not make any differences to its consequences. That isn’t what philosophy is for (unless you are a hardcore pragmatist). It certainly isn’t what metaphysics is for. The purpose of analytical philosophy is to improve your model of reality, seeking perfection. It is about seeking the truth as an end in itself.
There is not much space for an Abrahamic-style God in 2PC. If God is assumed to be a non-physical being who makes decisions about how the world is created and run, then this is logically incompatible with 2PC. It leaves space only for much more sophisticated forms of Christianity (if any at all). These ideas are considerably more closely related to certain forms of Eastern religion/philosophy.
The problem of evil has always been the main reason I rejected the idea of an Abrahamic God. I do not see a world that looks like it is being organised by a perfect super-mind. It all looks very much the work of humans to me.
It helps a great deal if the problem you are trying to solve is the Meaning Crisis, and the cultural paralysis of the postmodern world.
Honestly, this topic is incredibly frustrating. Because, IMO, it’s really simple that when you question the basic framing of the free will debate – “Determinism vs Freedom” – it falls apart pretty easy. But a lot of people are unwilling to question the premise.
So we have people holding up “non-computable” as something that supposedly gives us freedom, simply because they believe it destroys determinism.
As I said in the opening post, Free Will is notoriously the most difficult area of philosophy. There is a great deal of confusion, and it is partly because it interfaces with so many other difficult questions, including theology, ethics and philosophy of science.
Had another thought over free will, and this seems the case. Free will is real in a sense that we use the word. But only in the special occasions. And only to mean the responsibility of the actions and decisions.
If you say, you threw a stone out of your free will, then it just means you are responsible for the action and decision of the throw.
It doesn’t seem to be saying anything more than that. It is just a way of saying or expression in linguistic form.
Logically, it seems unclear how it is “free”, and what is the nature and existence of the “will”. We have urge to drink coffee or water, so we would like to drink it. We drink whatever we want to drink, but do we have a mental existence called “will” in our mind which made the action of drinking to happen? Can it be pointed at distinguishingly from other emotions, sensations, perceptions and thoughts? Not quite sure.
For your theory the burden of proof is on you to show that intentions don’t exist, because they are commonly regarded as states of mind.
Not in the ontological sense you define them as. According to the normal idea of what an “intention” is, then a high valuation of a particular future for your own body IS an “intention”. My objection if your turning it into an ontologically real thing, and then claiming this “must” exist". Your entire position is an exercise in question-begging:
(1) Determinism is true.
(2) Therefore determinism is true and it is up to others to prove a negative (that “intentions” don’t exist as ontological entities).
All you are doing is taking the only thing that could be responsible for free will, and declaring that it “must be” an ontologically real prior state of reality (and then wrongly claiming everybody else believes the same thing, so it must be true). You are literally declaring your conclusion to be true, then demanding others prove a negative as the only way of refuting it.
This is bad philosophy.
You might say that. I am equating free will with consciousness and wavefunction collapse – three different names for the same process.
If you say, you threw a stone out of your free will, then it just means you are responsible for the action and decision of the throw.
It doesn’t seem to be saying anything more than that. It is just a way of saying or expression in linguistic form.
Again, metaphysical statements can either be true or false. What matters is the truth or falsity, not the statement itself.
Logically, it seems unclear how it is “free”, and what is the nature and existence of the “will”. We have urge to drink coffee or water, so we would like to drink it. We drink whatever we want to drink, but do we have a mental existence called “will” in our mind which made the action of drinking to happen? Can it be pointed at distinguishingly from other emotions, sensations, perceptions and thoughts? Not quite sure.
All that is explained in the OP. If you really want to understand it, then you need to read (as a minimum) Chapters 8 to 13 of the PDF.