Really? Could you say more? How are they compatible?
No it’s not. The neurons in your brain firing are physical, what you call “conscious will” is not. Just because your brain concocted some idea doesn’t mean that idea is physical nor real.
My thought process doesn’t start by trying to find a compatibility, but instead by looking at the options in front of me.
On the one hand, I have people saying determinism is true.
On the other hand, I have people saying it isn’t true (and therefore, some of them say, we have free will).
When I looked at those two options, I realized that “we have free will” doesn’t really make sense just because determinism isn’t true. If determinism isn’t true (and what I’m about to say is certainly controversial), then that means there is randomness. And randomness is not a source of freedom. Randomness is just random. In a deterministic world, it’s said that we’re a slave to causality, to physics. Isn’t that also true in a world with randomness? Wouldn’t we just be a slave to (physics + some randomness)? My intuition says randomness leaves us no more free than determinism.
And that train of thought leads me to trying to figure out what we mean when we say “I feel like I have free will”, or “I’m experiencing the ‘illusion’ of free will”. What are people talking about here?
I can’t go through my entire thought process in this post, but that’s how it starts. Eventually I realize that the thing people say they feel when they feel they have free will has nothing to do with determinism being false.
Compatibilism is the position that free will is compatible with physicalism and determinism. Your response is “physicalism is false”. That’s not an appropriate response.
I am arguing that if physicalism is true and so if our conscious will is nothing more than (causally determined) brain activity then free will can still be maintained — because this conscious will might still be causally responsible for our behaviour.
But now you have begun equivocating. In this post you literally talk about the term “my will.” Now instead of talking about that term you have switched to a different term, namely willing an event. The term “my will” and the term “willing my foot to move” are obviously two very different, equivocal terms.
You changed it from “free will” to “my will.” I mean, you’re basically off topic.
OK, so you don’t understand physicalism. Physicalism doesn’t state that everything that exists is physical, it states that everything that exists is ultimately physical.
My idea of a pink unicorn is not physical, but it can be ultimately be explained by physical processes: neurons activated in a particular way.
Even if you want to call my idea of a pink unicorn “physical” (defeating the whole purpose of the word) that doesn’t mean it’s real in any sense of the word.
Your “conscious will” is as imaginary as my pink unicorn and both ultimately are just a bunch neurons in certain states.
You mentioned these two “physical” events:
- Unconscious brain activity
- Conscious will
But this “conscious will” is nothing more than brain activity, just like a pink unicorn, and every and all nonsensical idea that has nothing to do with reality.
So no, you haven’t done any work to establish “conscious will” as legitimate, calling it “physical” means nothing.
That’s where (6) and (7) come in
I agree. There are aspects of determinism that seem to be beyond doubt. The same is true for free will. How can one side win in that situation? What if they’re both true in spite of the contradiction? What would that say about the universe and who we are? That’s how I look at it.
@Michael What is your free will free from?
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You’re splitting unnecessary hairs over the difference between using a noun and a verb.
If physicalism is true then me willing my foot to move is a neurological event. If this neurological event is causally responsible for my foot moving then me willing my foot to move is causally responsible for my foot moving. I have free will if my body’s movements are causally determined by me willing it to move in that way.
If you look at situations where people say “I did this of my own free will”, what are they talking about?
Are they saying, “my mind was completely free of all previous causal influences”?
Or instead are they saying something more like, “I wanted to do it and nobody stopped me, and nobody coerced me to do it or physically made my body do it against my will”?
Free will means free from being forced to do something by some other thing, but also also means free TO rather than free FROM. It means free TO do the thing I wanted to. In that moment, I was free TO follow my will.
My body moving in ways that I didn’t will it to, like nervous ticks, or not moving in ways that I willed it to, like wiggling my ears.
I think it also means having a choice. Of the possible futures in front of me, I decide which one becomes real.
Nervous ticks doesn’t sound like will of any sort.
I don’t understand. Do you mean that, when you willed your ears to wiggle, and they didn’t, that was your ears’ exercising their free will?
Equivocating between nouns and verbs is actually a big problem. “Will” is a noun. “Free will” is a noun. Pretending they are verbs will not do. Claiming that the human will is an event is a category error. Claiming that the human will is a set of acted-out verbs without any acting-out noun behind them is bizarre.
The “responsibility” that your argument depends on requires nouns. If someone denies that the human being or the human will is a noun, then they will not be able to generate any form of responsibility (or even a locus of causal activities).
Similarly, to say that, “X is responsible for Y,” requires the premise that X is an agent, strictly speaking. It implies, “X can be held responsible for Y” (“Gary can be held responsible for his action”). Of course we can use the word ‘responsibility’ in a metaphorical sense when we say things like, “The storm was responsible for the lightning strike,” but this sort of equivocation would not be permissible in philosophical argument.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear.
I’m saying that if my body’s movements aren’t being causally determined by my will (like with nervous ticks, or failing to wiggle my eyes) then I am not exercising free will.
Having free will is having the freedom (or “power”) to causally determine my body’s movements by willing it to move in that way.
You’re conflating causal responsibility and moral responsibility.
I am causally responsible for knocking over and breaking a vase if I trip and fall into it. Few would claim me morally responsible.
I haven’t commented on moral responsibility at all. I am only claiming that I have free will if me willing my body to move a certain way is causally responsible for my body moving in that way — something that can obtain even if me willing my body to move that way was causally determined by antecedent events.
You are presuming “me willing” is a coherent idea when it’s not. Your consciousness cannot “will” anything. That is precisely what we are discussing.
If after moving your foot you come up with the story “my foot moved because I willed it to move”, that doesn’t mean you “willed” anything, that means you think you willed something.
This is begging the question. You are constructing the question presupposing the conclusion that you can consciously will events.
That’s how your body always moves.
The difference between a nervous tick and a “willed” movement is that you find the former much harder to rationalize. You attribute to yourself decisions made by your subconscious a posteriori just like a boss takes credit for work his subordinates performed: “I did that”. But it’s just a story.
Let’s test your “will”. Do not complete the following: “the sum of 2+2 is”. If you say your subconscious didn’t automatically gave you the answer, I won’t believe you.
That’s an equivocation fallacy. The notions of “shit” and “the shit” are different, despite sharing the same term. Just like “free will” and “my own free will” are two different notions.