What is the crux of the free will debate?

General Philosophy
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This does not disprove free will, because the readiness potential does not necessarily lead to the action. There may still be a decision not to act, and the readiness potential dissolved without action. Therefore the Libet experiment is really irrelevant to the free will debate, not a crux at all.

You are misrepresenting “probability”. It is fundamentally subjective, produced by the person/people who determine the parameters and apply the mathematics. Your proposal of an omniscient statistician doesn’t even make sense, because if the person was omniscient they would not need to apply statistics to determine what is most likely to happen, they would already know.

There is much evidence that (3) is most likely true, it is understood in the context of “the butterfly effect” for example. But (4), “we control our actions” is way to ambiguous. This is because there is no clear indication of what “we” refers to, as well as the degree of “control” referred to. If we just assume an “I”, and the I is the complete human being, then it is clear that we have ‘some’ control over our own actions.

But this opens another tangential can of worms. If you violently push me, I have little control over my immediate movement. Then we have the very difficult question of distinguishing between what actions we have control over, and which we do not. Therefore (4) is not a productive premise, leading to all sorts of difficulties. Generally we just assume the obvious, the premise that we have some control over our actions through the capacity of choice. Obviously though, we are constrained by circumstances, and the capacity to control our actions is not omnipotence.

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There are three kinds of cognition in a human being: apprehension, affective cognition, and logical cognition. Logical cognition is merely the outward-facing interface through which apprehension and affective cognition connect with the world — it is invoked by them. Apprehension or affective cognition supplies logic with its preconditions, namely the very criteria of right and wrong; logic then performs “discrimination” on the basis of those preconditions. Every causal concept human beings have ever formed is built on this model. Causality itself does not exist; it is only a by-product generated by the way we cognize.

What we call free will is, in truth, nothing other than logic’s precondition — which is why it has been dubbed the “prior cause” of causality. Many believe that cognition is produced by logical deduction, simply because they have failed to see that logic is nothing but a tool.

Take the sentence “I love the red of this dress.” On the surface: the dress is red, therefore I like it. Most people assume the cause is “the dress is red” and the effect is “I like it.” But that is not how human cognition actually works. What really happens is that logical cognition registers the red, then matches it against the native disposition of the soul — and the match comes up: the soul is biased toward red. Affective cognition then delivers the verdict “I love it.” Logically speaking, no derivation can bridge “the dress is red” and “I love it.” The sentence is not a causal inference; it is a checking of a logical input against a primal, native bias of preference.

The judgment “I love it” is not rendered by logical cognition — it is rendered by affective cognition. So the sentence is half a description supplied by logic, and half a verdict handed down directly by affect. We glimpse logic’s deficit, yet cannot account for how that verdict is arrived at; we name the gap “free will.” In reality, it is only affective cognition calling the shots.

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What a person calls “liking” is, at bottom, affective cognition. Affective cognition asks for no logical verification, offers no reasons; it simply checks its own state. You can think of it as holding up the self as the standard, measuring the logical input against that standard — and the closer the input is to itself, the more readily it says yes. This kind of liking needs no reason at all; a check is enough.

Only one thing is required: when we come to express that liking, logic must be called in to put it into words. So the actual process runs like this:

logical input → affective checking yields the result → logical output.

Most people only ever see the input and the output, and conclude that logic did the whole job. Which is precisely why they’re left puzzled: how did logic arrive at that verdict? Bring affective cognition into the picture, and the puzzle dissolves — you see why logic can carry the input in and the output out, why the result it delivers is something logic itself can never account for, and why no two people’s results quite match.

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The free will debate is really only psychological. Under the psychological pressure to do their best, people want to conceive of choosing in terms of selection of the best option.

However very clearly the logic that functions is for decisions to be spontaneous, and the decision-maker to be subjective. Which logic is very simple, and fairly easily discovered in conversation.

So then the free will debate consists of an endless stream of baseless assertions that choosing has the logic of selection of options, motivated by the enormous psychological pressure on people to do their best.

I guess the only way to end the free will debate would be to enforce the rule that people must first define words according to the use in conversation, and make it clear if they wish to deviate from the meaning used in conversation.

48

I think that probability is relevant because frozen before a particular point, there are a number of ways things could go; as we approach that point the possibilities narrow down to whatever event is situated at that point.
To your example, I would also count the person’s mental states and whatever else they were exposed to in determining whether or no they quit smoking; the point is their decision to quit does not arise out of nowhere. Maybe I am using the wrong term or concept here in invoking probabilities. I might have confused the entire issue more than was necessary. Thank you for your input, it’s given me more to consider. :))

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Indeed, I asked. Thank you for the detailed reply! :))

50

Not really. What’s being misrepresented here, is the standard claim for determinism. But that’s not in issue in this quote:

Yes. That’s right. Which is why I said:

If the point has been missed, I’m sorry for not being clearer. It is that the claim probability has something to do with volition is wrong (whether thats right, it is the point). But I would still say you’re wrong because the person capable of crunching all the numbers is still not omniscient. They just have access to all available elements influencing any single event. They can just calculate probability of x outcome to 100%. They still have to do the calculation - they don’t just “know” the probability of ever potential. I think.

is also the result of all prior causes in a person’s life. And I guess, prior to that given the state of hte world at their birth etc..

I say: It didn’t. As you say, logic is a tool and might help with forming language in the sense of presentation to others. But this is to conflate the action of designing sentences and the action of emotional valence causing that sentence-designing action.

51

I want to complain again about your use of the word selection.

Selection is how a chesscomputer may calculate a move. It is natural selection where organisms are optimalized towards reproduction. Selection determines human behavior when a task is done repeatedly, which becomes much automatic.

Selection is not choosing. Choosing is spontaneous, a decision can turn out one way or another in the moment that the decision is made. In a decision on of alternative possiblities is made the present. In selection the options are already in the present, where they are being evaluated.

Anyone can see that these are 2 totally different logical constructs, which therefore should have different names, selection and choosing. And you can’t use the word selection for choosing, as you do.

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So what is wrong with the interpretation? He makes this point many times, we are not free, in part, because we didn’t choose our genes, time of birth, education and formation, to be humans instead of cows, etc., or, crucially, all of our own desires (basically the Strawson argument applied to freedom). The implication is that freedom requires that one choose/control all of these things. But it follows then that a truly free being must choose each of these prior to having any body, any determinate nature, any history, any education, etc.

There are obvious reasons to think that something has gone badly wrong here. A toddler does not choose to be disciplined or potty trained, but surely it makes them more capable of self-government and self-mastery, and is a prerequisite from them even being able to understand what is truly worthy of choice.

So let’s back up, what is needed to show that:

A. Determinism is incompatible with free will (if determinism is true, free will cannot exist).

B. Determinism is true.

Well, first we need to define our terms. “Determinism” has to be specified. If “determinism” just means that every contingent being/actuality has a determining cause, then virtually all pre-modern Western thinkers were determinists. Nevertheless, while the modern schema of libertarian, compatibalist, incompatiblist fits thinkers outside the confines of modern Western thought poorly, a great deal of pre-modern thinkers are probably closed to libertarians. Did they simply fail to see the connection?

No, they had a different understanding of causality and of freedom (both of which are hotly contested issues to this day and so cannot simply be assumed). Both the authors I’ve mentioned are guilty of making this sort of assumption and not defining their terms.

The second thing we need is a clear definition of freedom. This is where Harris and Sapolsky are most obviously deficient. Neither pick popular understandings of freedom as their target, but instead use a poorly defined (and unargued) definition of freedom that requires that free being be an absolute causa sui, or even in some renderings that free action be a sui generis causal power outside the “laws of nature.”

The issue with the notion of freedom presented in the quote then is that any choice of one’s body, genes, species, date and place of birth, etc. made from a position prior to any of these would be a completely indeterminate choice, and so a “choice” made for no reason at all, rendering is arbitrary (i.e., random). And yet no one thinks random actions are paradigmatically free, else something like an muscle spasm would be the height of human freedom.

Both authors even point this out on multiple occasions (one wonders why they ever wrote the rest of their books)! But then if the definition of freedom invoked can be shown to be incoherent in a single paragraph, all the invocations of neuroscience and physics are at best window dressing, at worst (unintentional) obscurantism. They are irrelevant to showing that freedom is impossible because freedom is, on this definition, impossible already. Yet this obviously raises the question: “is this what most of the millenia of debate about freedom has assumed?” and the answer is, of course “no.” Indeed, the problems they point out with defining freedom in terms of sheer power/potency have been covered for centuries, they aren’t even novel.

Of course, they also spend most of their time on the determinism portion of the argument, but almost none on the actual metaphysics of causality. This then turns into an exercise of heaping up scientific explanations of various tangentially related phenomena (which are generally at least interesting and well done; neither are bad as popular science writers) and then taking each case as somehow being evidence for their poorly defined model of causality. But of course, causality is itself hotly debated and every party can explain the summary level popular science factoids they are stacking up; their interpretation is not somehow *uniquely scientific.*In Sapolsky’s case, as I noted earlier, what is suggested is a metaphysics where there simply are no beings at all (except by matter of convention), and so of course there are no free beings.

But we cannot smuggle in freedom as contradictory (by definition) and the absence of any beings to be free as premises and then call this a good argument. The conclusion is simply assumed in the premises.

Even some people trained as philosophers fall into this, and I find it interesting that they all tend to come from the eliminitivist camp (itself a very small minority amongst specialists). R. Scott Bakker has this same idea that elimintivism is “uniquely scientific” despite polling showing it garnering the support of about 2.8% of specialists. And they tend to come out of neuroscience and evolutionary biology or use them as primary authorities, which is ironic since you would think the physical sciences would be the most relevant place to appeal for a causality focused argument (and yet the afformentioned disciplines are sort of the great bastions of reductionism so maybe it isn’t surprising).

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53

If it even makes sense to talk about points in time, I think that at any point, as time is passing, there is a number of ways things could go.

I think everything is connected, to know everything which has any influence over any event, is to know everything.

Ok, I’ve read your complaint. But, as we’ve discussed already, I don’t agree with your needless distinction. My dictionary states, for the primary definition of select, “choose, esp. as the best or most suitable”.

I could argue that you misuse “select”, to say that a computer selects. But I won’t because I recognize that words like “select” have multiple meanings. However, I will say that if you assign to my word a meaning which was not intended by me, that’s equivocation. And that’s all your complaint amounts to.

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Ridiculous. You did not address that different logic must have different names. And clearly you are confusing selection with choosing, by following the dictionary definition. The dictionary definition is an obvious total conflation of the basic logic of choosing, the logic of selection, and the moral imperative to do your best. 3 different things, rolled into 1.

And which philosopher follows a dictionary? You have to check yourself what logic is used with words in conversation, and not trust some arbitrary dictionary like a noob.

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Welcome, @nowhereman. Or do you prefer “Jeremy”? I think we have will free from the law of physics.

I don’t know how someone can have the intention of moving their finger, thinking about it and deciding exactly when to move it, but when the finger moves it is not because it was the person’s intention and their thinking about moving it.

If they wired the whole body, the person intended to move the finger, sat there trying to decide when to move it, and then the toe moved, I might think the body is doing things without the person’s intention and thoughts.

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