Well, if you're right, and we can't excecise thought independent from our genes and external influences, then all our thoughts, mistaken or correct, are determined anyway.
So who are you to say that you're right and I'm wrong? Maybe your determined thoughts happen to be flawed, and mine happen to be correct.
In other words, a complete and utter denial of "free will" (which is vaguely defined, hence my "complete and utter" qualifier) is a self-defeating argument.
1. Heisenberg would not agree. It's more accurate to say that the universe is ruled by probabality and the probability distributions are deterministic.
Even leaving quantum mechanics aside, complexity of deterministic processes is often such that they are effectively random unless one knows the exact starting conditions and all the inputs.
2. generally agreed. social in the sense that good is what is beneficial for society.
3. Humans are essentially modulating the probabilities that occur naturally and to that extent free will is real. I'm tempted to say free will is as real as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle - but since I'm not sure, I'd say the probability of that is greater than 0.5 . Why ? Because biology comes from first principles and modern physics is ruled by probability. The first chemical forms would have to have taken it into account.
1. Yes i should have mentioned that about the universe; the pdfs are deterministic. I dont agree about "effectively random"; chaos != randomness. But, crucially, at the level of biological molecules that mediate most brain processes, quantum effects have little significance.
3. I disagree strongly with theidea that free will can arise from quantum uncertainty or randomness. That's not free will, that's random will. Unfortunately, great scientists have like R. Penrose advocate such things, but i believe most neuroscientists believe it to be hokum nowadays.
Randomness is relative to the knowledge of an observer. If you can not work out what a system is going to do in advance, it's random to you. If nobody in the universe can work out what a system is going to do in advance, even in principle (which can be established by complexity arguments and such), then it's as good as random, even if the universe is fully deterministic.
"Absolute" randomness isn't a useful concept, it tends to come apart in your hand when examined. Even if the universe is deterministic, you aren't smart enough to make it not random for you, nor can you be.
Randomness is random, if it is somehow entangled with another system then it there are hidden variables that haven't been discovered yet. Quantum physics is "absolutely" random ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_variable_theory for the story).
Hidden variables have not been disproved. What has been proved by Bell's inequalities is that any hidden variables that exist must themselves be irreducibly "quantum", so interest in the theory faded because for those of us on the inside of the universe the existence of fundamentally indeterminate hidden variables is just an unnecessary useless complication. But hidden variables may still exist. For instance, a computer simulating our universe may be using a deterministic PRNG (with strong statistical properties) to resolve quantum mechanics, which makes it deterministic on the outside for those who know and control the PRNG, while appearing fully random on the inside.
There is no such thing as "absolutely random". I'm not kidding, if you try to really seriously define it with math it comes apart in your hands. Both randomness and probability are intrinsically relative.
- I think the OP was referring to chaotic systems as effectively random, which they are not
- It certainly forces us to redefine what is the meaning of free will, if we dont accept dualism. Since Libet's experiments there are many others that have shown quite convincingly that our conscious "will" is predetermined from our brain processes even seconds before we are aware of our "will", and what's more that subconscious process can be manipulated. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will has some pointers (although i didn't read the whole)
(1) You've stepped into and apparently completely ignored the exact fallacy pointed out by the grandparent of this comment.
(2) You offered arbitrary assertions without evidence. You know what I think; if you want to counter it, give evidence. Shouting louder doesn't do you any good.
To respond to your arbitrary assertions:
- Yes, but not in the sense you mean.
- No. Right and wrong must be discovered.
- No. Depends on your definition of "free will," but in general, no.
Thanks for an interesting and thoughtful response. :-)
Unfortunately, my reading list is tooo long to add anything new anywhere near the front of the queue, unless it's something that is absolutely earth-shattering. I see that the book you suggest is rated highly on Amazon. But the first review that comes up for me (maybe it's the first one for you, too) is a June 5 review by a neuroscientist (supposedly) who discounts the book as being highly intellectually sloppy.
I actually think we may agree on the second overall bullet point. Which is a lot closer than I thought we were. However, I think certain empiricist philosophers have been pretty mistaken. I'm not an expert in either analytic or continental philosophy, but wasn't Hume the famous empiricist who posed the "is-ought" dichotomy and rejected the possibility of finding any solution to it? Any Rand posed a solution to this problem, and I agree with her. I can provide further references up on request.
On the third bullet point: I think "free will" is properly understood as a person's ability to choose whether or not to think about something. The more they think, the more refined their conclusions become. It's wrong to just claim that people are a product of their genes and environment, which implicitly ignores this thinking process. So to answer the question, the actor's "will" is the key factor here (if you want to use that word), but of course there is nothing supernatural going on.
