That is not how “will” is understood in philosophy.
Not if his foot was stuck, or he was tied up, or if he was experiencing sleep paralysis.
If he cannot actually move his foot, he cannot will his foot to move.
You’re equivocating.
It’s true that he cannot cause his foot to move by willing it to, but his brain does perform the action described as “willing his foot to move” — and were he not tied up or paraplegic, this brain activity would cause his foot to move.
As an example, John and Jane are both holding out their left hand, and both their hands are shaking. John’s hand is shaking against his will because he has Parkinson’s disease, and Jane’s hand is shaking because she’s willing it to.
The difference between John’s movements and Jane’s movements are that Jane’s movements, unlike John’s movements, are caused to happen by the appropriate (conscious) brain activity. That causal connection is all that is required to have free will, not some nebulous counterfactual notion of “could have done otherwise” or the like.
What do you think it means?
Using Free Will (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) as an example, one (counterfactual) account of free will is:
An agent has the freedom to do otherwise than ϕ just in case if she preferred or willed to do otherwise, she would have done otherwise (Hobbes 1654 [1999], 16; Locke 1690 [1975]) II.xx.8; Hume 1748 [1975] VIII.1; Moore 1912; Ayer 1954)
Notice there are two parts to this:
- Willing to do X
- Doing X
The counterfactual claim is that if (1) were otherwise then (2) would be otherwise.
The compatibilist claim is that (1) is something the brain does and (2) is something that (1) causes to happen.
And even if one agreed with some counterfactual notion of free will, note that the above is consistent with physicalism and determinism, because to say that if (1) were otherwise then (2) would be otherwise is to say that if some antecedent physical event were otherwise then the subsequent physical event would be otherwise.
No. Jane’s movements are caused by subconscious brain activity which you wrongly attribute to the conscious.
This is ipse dixit. You are just claiming Jane’s movement are caused by her consciousness with zero justification for that claim.
There cannot be a causal connection between a future event and a past event.
By the time you become conscious of a decision to move a limb, the subconscious already made the decision.
Can you prove that a single action came from your consciousness? No you cannot.
So all of these are ipse dixit statements with zero justification.
Also, you are conveniently avoiding many of my counterarguments, like this one:
You cannot just will your conscious will any more that I can will to go back in time.
I was imprecise in my wording there, but I was clearer in previous posts: I’m only trying to argue that free will is compatible with physicalism and determinism, not that we actually have compatibilist free will.
In other words, I’m arguing that these premises are consistent, not that they are all true:
- Everything is physical
- Every physical thing is causally determined by antecedent events
- Our conscious will causally determines our behaviour
- We have free will
(3) is sufficient for (4) to be true. The fact that our conscious will is causally determined by antecedent events is irrelevant.
Now it might be that (3) is false, and that our conscious will and our behaviour are simply “parallel” with some common, subconscious cause, but that’s a separate matter.
I’m not saying that you can. Free will doesn’t require that I can will what I will; it only requires that I can will what I do — and I can will what I do even if physicalism and determinism is true.
Disagree with this framing.
Firstly, you seem to be making a distinction between the conscious and subconscious mind as almost two entities. But in terms of something like conscious choice we are necessarily including the subconscious…It’s misleading naming, I know, but what we think of as the conscious mind, with subjective experience and capable of reasoning, doesn’t make sense as something standalone. It is processing subconscious data.
Secondly, I also don’t like the framing of rationalizing after the fact. We’re all aware of the Libet experiments, but I think people draw the wrong conclusion from this and also generalize.
If I move my foot because I am putting my foot into a shoe I want to try on, that’s not some random spasm from my foot that I am now rationalizing as choice.
Thanks for this, I alluded to them earlier but not by name.
One response is here:
Many neuroscientists and most philosophers contest the claims about the supposed inefficacy of conscious will, and this paper summarises their arguments. At the neurophysiological level, it has not been shown convincingly that a neural ‘decision’
sufficient to cause the movement occurs before the time of awareness of the decision to move.
That isn’t true. As I already explained physicalism states that everything is ultimately physical, not that the everything is physical.
That is not possible. There is no such thing as “conscious will”.
But 3) is not even a coherent idea. I already asked you to explain exactly what you mean by “conscious will” and you refused to do so:
The reason why the ability to choose otherwise is more useful is that it avoids all these semantic tricks and we focus on reality, not vague unprovable concepts.
Did anyone mentiom Benjamin Libet’s experiment? Conducted in the 1980s he discovered that voluntary muscles are activated before a person desires to move.
I don’t understand though - Schopenhauer clearly demonstrated the problem with his, “you can do what you will, but not want what you will”.
Libet’s experiment compounds the matter further.
It’s also common knowledge that we’re social creatures, which leads us to bees and behives. The queen ant’s behavior is well-documented.
I’m not saying that it’s true. I’m saying that if it were true then …
I don’t know why I need to keep explaining this.
One can accept both that a) free will is compatible with physical determinism and that b) physical determinism is false.
“Not possible” and “not true” do not mean the same thing. It’s possible for (3) to be true even if (3) is false.
And again, you’re splitting hairs over the use of nouns over verbs.
I am willing my foot to move, and if physicalism is true then “I am willing my foot to move” describes something my brain is doing. If this thing my brain is doing is causally responsible for my foot moving then my foot moved because I willed it to, and I have free will. That my brain doing this thing is causally determined by antecedent events does not deny this.
The counterfactual claim “I could have done otherwise” is much more of a vague, unprovable concept than the claim “my body moves because and as I willed it to”.
How does one even try to prove a counterfactual?
They are two fundamentally different entities. Your conscious mind has no access to how the subconscious operates. That’s the whole reason this distinction exists in the first place.
There is no such thing as a “conscious choice”, the choice is ultimately made by the subconscious. I also reject the claim the the conscious is capable of reasoning. Reasoning is a process initiated and ended by the subconscious, and yes, the conscious is a part of that process, but it makes no decisions, its job is to observe, to witness. That’s it.
It doesn’t do such thing.
There are countless experiments that show the conscious is just making up stories about how “it” made a choice, when the actual way the subconscious made the decision is completely different.
The subconscious decided to move the foot because it decided to try it on.
Have you ever found yourself in a room wondering why you are there? Who do you think decided to move your feet to get you there? About 98% of brain activity is subconscious, but of course you being a consciousness is going to believe you are more important.
Even if you disagree with this framing, all the scientific experiments are consistent with this view, and no one has been able to prove that a single decision was made by the conscious mind.
Yes, Mijin1 mentioned it a couple of posts up. See here for a response to those experiments. Apparently many neuroscientists disagree with Libet’s conclusions.
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And I’m saying it cannot be true.
If your argument begins with “if an impossibility is true, then” I don’t need to know the rest, your argument goes to the trash. For example if you begin with “if a triangle has four sides…” we are done.
And it’s easy to prove that’s not true with a single non-physical example: a mind is not physical.
That’s it, your argument is disregarded.
And I said not possible, which implies not true.
But you are not willing to explain what you mean by “I am consciously willing my foot to move”.
No it isn’t. If determinism is true, then you couldn’t have done otherwise. Case closed.
You still have not explained what you mean by “conscious will”.
Then you’re not engaging with the discussion.
The situation is: many scientists and philosophers believe that physicalism and determinism are true, and so that the mind is physically determined. They worry that this entails that we don’t have free will. Compatibilists respond by arguing that we can have free will even if the mind is physically determined, and so that free will is compatible with physicalism and determinism.
Responding to this with “but the mind isn’t physical” is completely out of place.
No, you are not listening.
I already explained you two times that’s not what physicalism means.
Physicalism doesn’t state the mind is physical, it states the mind is ULTIMATELY physical.
How many more times do you need me to explain the same thing?
Regardless, your claim “everything is physical” is not only false, but demonstrably false.
Yeah, by changing the definition of free will to something the overwhelming vast majority of people would disagree with.
I could do the same semantic trick in order to argue that a triangle can have four sides: all we have to do is change the definition of “triangle”.
You still have not explained what you mean by “conscious will”.
How could the “power to choose” not entail “could have done otherwise?” If you couldn’t have done otherwise, then you didn’t have a choice. How do you defend your view?
What does the word “ultimately” add?
It’s not changing any definition. Taken from Free Will (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) for example:
The term “free will” has emerged over the past two millennia as the canonical designator for a significant kind of control over one’s actions. Questions concerning the nature and existence of this kind of control (e.g., does it require and do we have the freedom to do otherwise or the power of self-determination?), and what its true significance is (is it necessary for moral responsibility or human dignity?) have been taken up in every period of Western philosophy and by many of the most important philosophical figures, such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant.
The primary concern, as explained in that first sentence, is that we have a significant kind of control over our actions.
What it takes for us to have this kind of control is where we disagree; some believe that we have this control only if we could have done otherwise, and some believe that we have this control only if we have the power to bring about the intended outcome.
Compatibilists argue for the latter.
The former is problematic on two accounts. Firstly, it requires that counterfactuals be true, but there are legitimate philosophical objections to counterfactuals being true. Secondly, if quantum indeterminacy is an objective fact then determinism is false, but surely this “randomness” is not all it takes to have free will. So evidently “we could have done otherwise” isn’t all there is to having free will.
I’ve explained it several times. It’s a particular kind of brain activity. We recognize it when it occurs and we name it “conscious will”. It’s beyond my capacity to draw you a picture of or describe in words the innumerable possible neurological configurations that constitute our conscious will.
The word “choose” is ambiguous. It can mean “decide” which can mean “determine” which can mean “cause”. The power to cause one thing does not require the capacity to have caused another thing.
This is why I tend not to use the word “choose”. Instead I’m very precise with my words; I have free will if I have the power to control (cause) my body to move as I will it to.
I think you’re the only one finding that ambiguity. It’s clear to everyone else.
This is what wikipedia says about freedom to choose:
Freedom of choice is an individual’s opportunity and autonomy to perform an action selected from at least two available options, unconstrained by external parties. wikipedia
No you haven’t. Not a single time.
Every idea is a “particular kind of brain activity”. My idea of a pink unicorn is also a particular kind of brain activity.
The question is what makes that particular kind of brain activity different from other brain activities.
By that metric I have an “ability to fly”, if I have a “particular kind of brain activity”, that I recognize and name it “ability to fly”.
That should give you a hint that “conscious will” is word salad. It doesn’t mean anything beyond something you feel and wish to be true.
Using your criterion, any subjective experience gets ontological legitimacy by merely naming it.
Then as I said before, if this is what you mean by “choose” I disagree with your claim that moral culpability requires the power to choose.
I might say that moral culpability only requires the power to willfully decide/determine/cause. If I killed John because I willed myself to, then I am morally culpable even if I could not have done otherwise.
But even more fundamentally, I disagree with your claim that free will requires moral culpability at all. We can have free will even if moral nihilism is true and “moral culpability” is an incoherent/false concept.