Devinology t1_j8qrq2k wrote
Reply to comment by EleanorStroustrup in “The principle of protecting our own thinking from eavesdroppers is fundamental to autonomy.” – Daniel Dennett debates the sort of free will it’s worth wanting with neuroscientists Patrick Haggard and philosopher Helen Steward by IAI_Admin
You've horribly misunderstood what I said. We're not talking about arrogance. Harris holds a very naive conception of agency; be thinks that having agency means having control over reality in some way, making decisions that change the course of the world. This is what I mean by god-like. He thinks that since physical laws dictate that we have no such ability, we must not have free will. He's not wrong about the science, he's wrong about what constitutes free will. Free will is not the power to be a "first mover".
EleanorStroustrup t1_j8qto68 wrote
> be thinks that having agency means having control over reality in some way, making decisions that change the course of the world.
Taking something mundane like “I choose to have a glass of water now” and framing it as wanting to “change the course of the world” is a choice you’ve made to imply arrogance on the part of the speaker. Now anyone who argues that having free will is ideal looks like they’re saying they should have omnipotence.
> This is what I mean by god-like.
Why do you believe that only gods should have this power?
Devinology t1_j8qwypn wrote
Nope, you're not getting it. If the state of the world at the present moment is completely determined by the preceding moment, then you can't choose to have a glass of water, because that would mean defying the laws of realty and exerting a god like power. You're drinking the glass of water because at the start of all existence something was set in motion that dictated you would drink that water. This is the conception of reality that Harris and other determinists have. This is not what I'm saying, this is what determinism is. This is why Harris concludes that free will is an illusion.
The reason he's wrong is that this god-like ability to break the laws of reality simply doesn't have anything to do with having a free will.
EleanorStroustrup t1_j8qx9g7 wrote
> If the state of the world at the present moment is completely determined by the preceding moment, then you can’t choose to have a glass of water, because that would mean defying the laws of realty and exerting a god like power.
I know. But nobody is saying “I wish I had the power to ignore physical laws”. They’re saying “if only things weren’t deterministic, because it would be kinda nice to actually have agency and be able to make choices”.
Devinology t1_j8qyf6x wrote
That's the same thing. And I don't think anybody is saying either of those things. That's the point, we know we do have free will. If we didn't, we wouldn't be able to function, there would be no point to anything, and ethical concepts would be meaningless. That's why it's a genuine philosophical problem. We know we have free will, but we also know the science appears to dictate causal determinism. How do we reconcile the 2? Harris wants to give a non-answer and just conclude that we don't have free will. He gives no explanation for how this makes sense or why this is a useful conception of free will. He's ignoring the heart of the problem.
EleanorStroustrup t1_j8qys18 wrote
Your argument is built on several unstated assumptions that are not obviously correct.
> That’s the point, we know we do have free will.
No, we don’t know this.
> If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to function,
Why would not actually having free will mean we couldn’t function?
> there would be no point to anything,
Yes. And?
> and ethical concepts would be meaningless.
Yes. And?
Devinology t1_j8qzj7h wrote
We do know, because we know the difference between experiences of agency and lack of agency. This wouldn't be a topic of conversation otherwise. Why would we even be discussing this? Again, this is the point here. Experiencing free will is all free will is. It would be nothing if not experienced. A god-like figure dictating reality without perceiving itself as doing so wouldn't have free will because it wouldn't experience itself as such. It wouldn't care.
Experiencing free will is tantamount to having it. Anything else is some other unrelated concept.
If there was no point to anything then you wouldn't bother doing anything.
If ethical concepts were meaningless than we wouldn't care about them.
A determined reality would dictate that we wouldn't bother pretending to have free will if we didn't have it.
EleanorStroustrup t1_j8r3lir wrote
> Experiencing free will is all free will is. It would be nothing if not experienced. A god-like figure dictating reality without perceiving itself as doing so wouldn’t have free will because it wouldn’t experience itself as such.
The experience is necessary, but not sufficient. A god-like figure who doesn’t think they have free will wouldn’t meaningfully have free will, but neither would a non-god who thinks they have free will, because they’d still have to actually have free will in order to have free will.
I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of demonstrations that thinking oneself admirable is not sufficient to actually be admirable. Free will isn’t qualitatively different from that.
liquiddandruff t1_j8uwg7s wrote
A lot of free will proponents seem unable to distinguish between the concepts of a subjective experience of free will and the ontological existence of free will. They think subjective experience is sufficient to automatically prove the latter. They see them both as one concept. So strange.
It's like a mind block. Kind of shocking to see, really.
liquiddandruff t1_j8uw979 wrote
> A determined reality would dictate that we wouldn't bother pretending to have free will if we didn't have it.
False. You seem to be under the assumption a determined reality cannot give rise to the illusion of free will. This is an grounded, baseless assumption you're standing on.
We are experiencing "free will" but our subjective experience of such does not automatically impart to the universe that then free will as a concept is true. If you don't see this, simply come up with any other subjective experience as example and you should reach the same conclusion.
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