This topic has been buzzing around my mind for a while, so I figure it’s time to externalize it. “Free will is an illusion” is a meme that I’ve seen quite a lot on this site especially. I don’t think most people who repeat it have thought much about it.
Yeah, materialism (which I hear is popular around here) suggests a mechanistic universe, one without true randomness, defined solely by predictable input and output. That contradicts our intuition about independent free will, which seems unpredictable (or at least not fully predictable) when we experience it. I don’t think a fully mechanistic universe is incompatible with free will, though - in fact, I think that any coherent definition of free will must necessarily exist even under a materialist lens. Those of you who are (like me) pop-philosophy dilettantes probably know that this position is called “compatibilism”.
Obviously, though, people disagree. I want to know why. If you don’t believe that free will exists, under what circumstances do you think it would exist? What do you think would change if it did exist according to your definition?
This whole convo has been poisoned by the idiotic ramblings of Sam Harris unfortunately. So now you got all these reddit dorks who think they’re deep philosophers cuz they regurgitate something from a 15 minute Sam Harris talk.
What happens, do they get owned big time on the askphil reddit by people who have actually read philosophy?
I have the outlier position of free will absolutist, though I’d readily admit my rationale isn’t necessarily the strongest.
tl;dr: Qualia and phenomenal sensation are non-physical phenomenon; thus if we are able to perceive non-physical phenomenon then that must logically entail we can react to non-physical phenomenon which means the machinations of our minds / consciousness aren’t necessarily bound to physics or notions of casuality as we understand them.
Why do you say that qualia are necessarily non-physical? I think it’s plausible that advances in neuroscience (far into the future, probably) could provide a robust physical description of how we experience sensation.
This is conjecture more than anything and I could be proven wrong, but I don’t this is another ‘science will figure it out when it gets advanced enough’ issue.
You can theorize of a hypothetical being that knows the exact atomic make-up of a red object down to the smallest molecule and exactly how it triggers the color-cones in our eyes but that being would not phenomenally know the experience of redness unless they had observed it for themselves subjectively.
I think the problem here is, where do you cram the non physical portion in? Is there an interaction point with the physical?
Either the being with qualia never interacts meaningfully with the object, in which case conscious beings are just floating spirits pretending they make decisions and free will is irrelevant.
Or Qualia interacts with the physical body in some way that a direct simulation does not, producing a different result, in which case we can design an experiment to test where that interaction begins and the needed components for that.
I agree that any simplified or limited understanding of sensation wouldn’t be the same as subjective experience - even fully simulating a human mind wouldn’t be sufficient - but I don’t think that means experience can’t be physical.
Imagine an impossibly complex computer, purely composed of physical and electrical components. Imagine it’s capable of self-observation, that it has a basic form of consciousness. We could document every bit of that computer’s innards, understand every input and output. We could scrutinize its self-observation. We still wouldn’t know what it feels like to “be” that computer. We couldn’t access its qualia, even though it would be purely physical.
And yeah, the obvious rejoinder to that is that it wouldn’t be experiencing qualia, and wouldn’t be actually conscious. To me that feels like solipsism, but I admit that it’s impossible to know. This whole thought experiment might be circular, actually. If a purely physical thing can experience qualia, then qualia must be physical, but if qualia aren’t physical then a purely physical thing couldn’t experience them. That question might be irresolvable.
This is conjecture more than anything and I could be proven wrong, but I don’t this is another ‘science will figure it out when it gets advanced enough’ issue.
Agreed. I always felt like assuming science is capable of infinite progression to be pure hubris. There’s no guarantee we don’t hit an intractable problem in every single field, and I’d be willing to wager real cash money we eventually do.
You can theorize of a hypothetical being that knows the exact atomic make-up of a red object down to the smallest molecule and exactly how it triggers the color-cones in our eyes but that being would not phenomenally know the experience of redness unless they had observed it for themselves subjectively.
I disagree with this though, or rather the more general variant that gets passed around. I see absolutely no reason qualia couldn’t be, or arise from, purely physical interactions. In the more general example I’ve seen it’s usually phrased as something like “A being that possesses omniscience of the concept of Red, but has not experienced vision of it.” Which seems like a either a non-sequetor or misses the point entirely.
In the first interpretation I cant see how you could have a being that has “Knowledge of all possible notions of a concept” without experiencing qualia, because if it had it wouldn’t have had “Knowledge of all possible notions.” Congrats, you made a god that cant lift stones and gave it a rock.
In the second interpretation im just like “Ok? What now though?” Visual qualia and cognitive qualia aren’t the same thing, cool, agreed. Somebody that can see but has no idea of how vision works is also lacking the qualia of seeing within that context, or having thoughts related to it. Locked out of entire possible mind-space. Simply seeing Red is a different qualia than understanding Red, which is yet still a different qualia than doing both or neither. A blind person and an infant are both qualically(?how tf do you adverb qualia?) starved.
Edit: I should probably say I think materialist panpsychism is dope and good. Probably should have lead with that. Sorry.
I find talking about this stuff super interesting and relevant, since my opinions on these things are essentially what informs all my political beliefs. Long post time:
I feel like im in a fairly unique position because lack of free-will is actually the intuitive answer to me. I can’t quite explain why but it feels more correct. It’s mostly to due with the slight dissociative feelings I had when I was younger, and to a lesser degree now, where I feel “like im just watching a movie of myself living my life”. I now see that as me unconsciously and intuitively being aware of my thoughts popping into my head as purely coded reactions to things, or thats my analysis at least. Regardless, I feel that sooooo much of how a person acts, their choices, their preferences, and their reactions to things can be traced back to external stimuli that even if compatibilism is more correct, things are close enough to a lack of free will that for practical purposes it can be assumed that we just have an illusion of free will but dont actually.
This then leads into my political beliefs. I feel that a deterministic no-free-will view of things is the best justification for an anti-hierarchical stance. If people don’t choose their environments and experiences then everyone is just a victim of consequences. When im talking to friends and get to this point they like to point out that “so we just let criminals go free then?” to which I have a less scientific response to. My username references a quote from Night in The Woods where a character says “I believe in a universe that doesnt care, and people who do”, which I also believe in, and I think is quite profound when you consider the utter vastness of the universe. If the universe is a near endless void of bleakness, then the actions of humans, passion, love, caring about fictional characters, is just flat out absurd. Despite that though, humans (and lots of other life) still does it, and this brave defiance in the face of the void I personally think creates meaning in itself. Almost a sort of “romantic nihilism” I say, where what matters in this universe is the passions of lifeforms that thrive in defiance of the void.
To thrive then is to explore passion and love and art and other things that are best achieved by ensuring that as many people (and other animals :im-vegan:) on earth can do so. And to do that means finding out why so many people are stuck working awful office jobs. Its not because of some people being bad and some people being good and/or choosing to do so, the systems that perpetuate these awful lives are propped up by “bad” people who are victims of circumstance of that same system. This wraps back around to my arguments on determinism where I feel that when trying to justify being anti-hierarchy, the most meaningful takeaway is that the focus should always be on the systems and environments that create “bad” people. And to give an answer to the many times people tell me “but like you cant just let a murderer walk free because they are a victim” I say that it becomes a complicated legal question to determine if they are harming more people’s ability to “thrive” as described earlier, and if so then whatever actions to stop them are therefore justified because the net thriving is kept as high as possible. But if all the systems and environments that create criminals and “bad” people are fought against I believe that there will be very very few people, only the most unlucky, to have to put in fancy personal hotel prisons to let them enjoy their lives without hurting others.
My last thought in regards to free will is a response to a friend of mine that said “I worry that your viewpoint cheapens the good actions of people, because they are just lucky in their circumstances”. I think my takes kinda lead to a healthy form of humility, recognizing that privilege runs very deep and in many forms but isn’t always an issue, because those who are in a better position have the responsibility of leveraging their lives to help the less fortunate thrive as well. And the benefit of showing those who are “bad” the source of their problems instead of telling them to self loathe is absolutely worth it.
I feel like im in a fairly unique position because lack of free-will is actually the intuitive answer to me. I can’t quite explain why but it feels more correct. It’s mostly to due with the slight dissociative feelings I had when I was younger, and to a lesser degree now, where I feel “like im just watching a movie of myself living my life”.
I think my own neurodevelopmental disorders definitely led me to intuitively rejecting free will. When you have ADHD and BPD and you can’t fucking clean up your house over and over despite wanting to because there ain’t enough molecule in your brain, you start to understand how that applies across the board. The well functioning brain doesn’t have to consider that the rewards it receives determines the actions it engages in, and that the response to the reward is entirely beyond them, for instance.
If you’re anxious and how you act, who you are, what you’ve done has been fundamentally conditioned by overactivation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis, the friends you have and the environment you find yourself in and the jobs you can perform, good luck finding the freedom in that. The obverse is still true, an HPA system that works well is still determining these things, just positively and without friction.
I don’t even think I exist, “I” am just the collection of qualia that “I” experience.
