I am coming from Heidegger’s point of view that freewill is an artificial problem which doesn’t exist.
Just wondering if freewill is a concept which can be proven to exist legitimately in what respect and sense, if it were proven. Or is it a concept which has no real meaning or entity to it.
For example, if you wanted to have a coffee instead of tea, why does “free” have to be involved in that decision? All decision is based on reasoning or biological instinct of desire. How is freedom related to making decisions, willing or wanting?
The concept clearly exists, although there is obviously very lively debate about what, exactly, it should mean.
Why does it matter? Because we are currently lacking a coherent theory of reality (scientific+metaphysical), and the level of confusion this topic generates indicates that it needs to be on the list of questions which should be conclusively resolved by the coming paradigm shift. It is obviously connected to both consciousness and wavefunction collapse, and those are 2 of the 3 big problem areas that need to be part of the solution.
What I am suggesting is that what you call an “intention” is actually a valuation: you are placing a high value on one possible outcome.
Consciousness models the future, and we are continually aware of different possible outcomes. Let’s take the example of choosing from a menu. According to you, this can only be the result of an infinite regress of intentions. This appears to assume a kind of determinism (even if it is a non-physical determinism). I am saying we have no need of any infinite regress, because a single set of non-computable valuations can conclusively end it. Non-computability is what ends it.
And do I also have an intention to create such a valuation? If not, then the valuation is unintended and therefore not freely willed.
Actually I think it’s unlikely that there is an infinite regress of intentions. It seems much more plausible that an intention simply pops into our heads without our freely choosing it and it subsequently determines our intentional action.
If freewill is just a way of your mental projection on your actions, choices or decisions, then it needs investigation or analyses what it really means when you are saying “freewill” exists and needing to be defended.
If you are having a coffee instead of tea, then it is your preference or wanting that you decided to go for.
“free” doesn’t need to be involved in that action at all. “free” from doing something implies there was some sort of external or authoritarian obstruction or repression on the actions that you wanted to take, and you had been barred from doing it. But somehow you managed to overcome or fight over it, and won the right to act OVER what was prevented from doing.
Nothing of that sort is involved in your having coffee instead of tea, or going for a walk instead of taking a nap.
It could be said that you are projecting “freewill” on the actions and decisions you made, which were the result of your preference, random choices or rational decisions, or even biological instincts and desires, which has nothing to do with “free”, “freedom” or “freewill”.
Of course the concept of freewill exists, but it seems a concept which is empty, meaningless or contradiction unless logically verified for its validity.
I was responding to a point about determinism and your retorts are as though I was injecting it as a premise. I wasn’t.
If you want to know my opinion, I think our universe is probably not deterministic. I don’t think it helps free will though, because I don’t think (libertarian) free will is even coherent.
I know you disagree with me on that latter point, but I wish you’d engage with it. How does a free will decision between coffee and tea work, if it is not solely the product of antecedents (memories, wants, understanding) and randomness?
If I think of the worst decision of my life, I can tell you exactly why I did it. The thoughts, wants and misconceptions that went through my head. The important information I wasn’t aware of at the time.
How does that decision being non-computable make it more free? All it would mean is that part of the process involved some kind of metaphorical dice being rolled in my mind and maybe I got unlucky by getting a bad roll.
How does dumb luck make me more, or less, free?
How is that not free? What is it not free of? It may not be meaningful or valuable, but is not being determined by anything not the definition of free?
No. The situation is forced upon you by the nature of reality. When we are conscious we are continually presented with situations where we have to choose which of the possible futures we prefer, and where non-action is itself one of the options. Consciousness is never passive.
NO. It looks this way to you only because you are assuming that something called “intentions”. There are no “intentions” in the model of reality I am describing. Instead, there are valuations.
In your view, when we choose from a menu, there is this non-physical thing called an “intention”, which comes from…somewhere? Where does it come from? Makes no difference to me, because I am saying that what you call an “intention” is a conclusive valuation. You put a high value on one of the possible outcomes. Saying this needs to have been “intended” is like saying there must be a little man in our head making decisions for us. It is entirely unnecessary, because the valuation plays exactly the same role as the intention, except it is not some ghostly thing that “pokes” our brain.
Why do we need intentions if we can assign values to different possible futures?
I don’t know what this means. No, free will is not “just a way of my mental projection on my actions”. I can’t even parse this claim.
We need to be careful here. We can have “urges” without deciding to act on them. That is what makes humans different to animals. “Preference” is different, because that refers to what we actually decide to do, and all I am saying is that the mechanism by which this is turned into action is via valuations of different possible futures.
Oh yes it does. We are talking about the freedom to not act on our urges (which are being driven by the laws of physics and our biology).
Exactly. If the laws of physics compelled us to act on our urges, rather than just urging us, then we would not be free. That is what determinists must believe if they are to be consistent. But the same does not apply to non-determinists.
Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn’t. If you are a coffee addict and trying to give it up then there is indeed a “fight” – you are fighting your urge to ingest a bit hit of caffeine.
Human behaviour is a complex mixture of acting on urges, on conditioning, on our own free thinking, and probably on other things too. But in the end we are free to value the possible futures, and if those valuations are non-computable then they cannot be determined by anything in the existing state of the world. They can be uncaused causes.
Penrose’s theory relies on quantum gravity in microtubules, not von Neumann consciousness collapse. Furthermore, Orch-OR has been heavily criticized and largely rejected by mainstream neuroscientists and physicists for decoherence reasons: The idea that brain macro-states maintain entangled superpositions across branches is physically implausible according to modern biophysics.
I have already explained this! It is the result of non-computable valuations.
The Embodiment Threshold defines when an agent is capable of this (when it has to start happening) and Competition-resolved Collapse defines what happens when multiple agents are entangled in the same part of Hilbert Space (how we end up sharing a single objective world when multiple wills clash).
You can only make a decision (value a particular physically possible outcome) based on the information available to you at the time. A decision should be considered bad not because it had a bad outcome, but because you had the relevant information but still made a bad choice. There is no point in regretting a decision which was the right decision based on what you actually knew.
How does that decision being non-computable make it more free?
Because it cannot be a result of the laws of physics. Here I part company with Penrose. He claims non-computable valuations are evidence of a deeper level of physics (which is non-computable). I believe he’s necessarily strayed into metaphysics. There is no deeper level of physics.
Phase 0 = the Void (0|∞)
Phase 1 = the Pythagorean Ensemble (a realm of pure structure/mathematics, where every possible timeline in every possible cosmos exists timelessly, EXCEPT anything including a living brain).
Phase 2 = Classical-relativistic reality, which only exists from the perspective of an embodied observer (a brain).
Phase 1 is quantum reality, where unitary evolution of the wavefunction exists as a timeless block. It’s like MWI, but only exists as quantum possibilities. There is no space or time in Phase 1 (no “now”). And there is no meaning or value.
Phase 2 is what (subjective) idealists think the whole of reality is – a collection of subjective viewpoints of a classical reality which changes through time. In Phase 2 it is always now.
The transition is defined by the Embodiment Threshold (linked several times already). At the point where a brain exists which is capable of making meaningful choices about which future it prefers, then continued MWI-like evolution of the wavefunction becomes logically impossible. In simplified terms we are faced with a situation where we must choose one future over the others – it is impossible for us to choose both. We can marry Alice, or marry Bob, but we cannot marry both of them.
I am aware of that. I am applying his concept of non-computable valuations in a way that he doesn’t. I am not defending Orch-OR. Nor am I defending Penrose’s attempted proof that consciousness is a non-computable process. I am saying it ought to be obvious that consciousness is non-computable, because this is the explanation as to why conscious animals are capable of all sorts of things which AI isn’t (such as understanding meaning, or making moral and aesthetic judgements).
When scientists have got a coherent model of reality instead of an incoherent collection of fragments, then we should take seriously what they think is plausible or not. If all we ever did was accept the status quo, paradigm shifts would never happen.
Most scientists are still physicalists and physicalism is bunk. Scientists tend to make bad philosophers.
I spent 6 months developing this theory, during which time I used multiple AIs to look for problems and to debate with each other the weaknesses of the theory. During this entire time, those AIs continually tried to turn the theory into pseudoscience. They repeatedly claimed to have figured out empirical tests (nearly all of which turned out to be flawed) and advised me again and again to make the theory as scientific as possible.
In the end I became very adept at resisting this pressure. The new theory does make 2 empirical predictions, but these are dictated by the structure of the theory itself. The first is we will never find alien life (especially conscious life, but any life at all is highly improbable), and the second is that dark matter should be Dirac monopoles.
However, the theory I am presenting is primarily a new interpretation of QM, and new metaphysical foundation for science. I am a philosopher, not a scientist.