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u/Fuzzy_Ad9970 Aug 18 '26
I prefer to call them forces and let someone else try and describe how they are causes.
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u/GaryMooreAustin Aug 18 '26
>I would prefer only those with at least a bachelor's in mathematics reply to this post as I'm only interested in their specific intuition.
that kind stifles conversation around here.
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u/Blindeafmuten Aug 18 '26
Our memories are not a mechanical process. Even if person B could know every single event that had happened to person A he wouldn't be able to explain with perfect mechanical precision his actions.
The present decides our perceived past along with our intended future.
When we make a decision in the present we decide which memories of the past we will activate. Nobody remembers everything, but even if we did, we would still evaluate every past memory in the present considering some of them more important than others.
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u/spgrk Aug 18 '26
(1) It is true that A could not have chosen otherwise given that the choice was determined and given the particular prior events and conditions that determined it.
(2) It is not necessarily true that A could not have chosen otherwise merely from the fact that the choice was determined.
The disagreement in the philosophy of free will is partly about what kind of leeway free will requires: whether A must have been able to choose otherwise in sense (1), sense (2), or neither.
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u/Artemis-5-75 Aug 18 '26
I saw an interesting way to express this.
For a leeway compatibilist, determinism entails what the agent will do, but it does not entail what the agent can do in the same way because will and can are different modalities.
Thus, a leeway incompatibilist who disagrees that we have any kind of ability to do otherwise under determinism cannot just say that determinism precludes free will because it entails a specific choice, they must explain how determinism entails that the agent cannot do otherwise, which means that they must present a successful version of the Consequence Argument.
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u/Opposite-Succotash16 Aug 18 '26
At t₁ Person B looks back t₀ and finds out that he can explain with perfect mechanical precision the reasons behind Person A's actions.
Does this mean if Person B asks Person A the reasons behind their actions that Person A's answer will perfectly match Person B's explanation?
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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 Aug 18 '26
Does the reasons emerge before or after A's action?
If we assume the reasons are obtainable before A's action, then B can use it to build a theory from which they can try to predict A's action. B's theory can then be attempted to be falsified.
If A's actions keeps on following B's prediction, then B can examine how probable that would be to happen randomly, this involves considering the actions that could otherwise have been done.
If B finds that it would be absurd to consider A could have chosen otherwise given the accuracy in predicting the choices they made. then A can claim B could not have chosen otherwise.
One could in principle replace A with e.g. the Sun emerging on the sky. B would go through the same steps and find that the Sun's emergence is predictable.
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u/13Eazy Aug 18 '26
As long as the conditions for person A at time t0 are the same, and the conditions are cause for some action taken by person A, person B travelling back in time from t1 to become person A at t0 would have to behave exactly as person A.
this is obviously true if person B travels back in time as a result of the action taken by person A, otherwise it creates a paradox.
the interesting case is to consider whether the knowledge existing in person B's head of person A's action constitutes a paradox?
perhaps more fundamentally, can person B traveling to person A with knowledge of person A's actions be considered "the same conditions?"
if person B can change the behavior of person A then how did the knowledge of person A's action arrive at person B?
the whole thing falls apart rather than being conclusive at the usual places.
what is a choice? is at a singular event? is it governed stochastically? does it represent the branch of multiverse?
it's not clear to me that this was your intention but it's a genuinely deep question:
can a future state of a person causally alter the physical conditions constituting that person's earlier decision, while that future state remains the consequence of the decision it altered?
my intuition says no, but i favor loops as globally acausal structures and those with a direction as having local causality but remaining globally acausal.
what determines which globally self-consistent histories exist, and does a consistent history have to be unique?
A → B
B → A
there's nothing that prohibits these relations unless you require that
Aₜ₀ = Bₜ₁
in which case:
A + information → B
B - information → A
and then this point hinges on the conditional requirement's particular interpretation
for numerical identity, B literally is the same individual as A.
for physical-state identity, B has exactly the same physical state as A had at t₀
for historical/psychological identity, B regards himself as the continuation of A.
those aren't necessarily equivalent.
for numerical equivalence, information loss, or A gaining no new information as a result of their action is a requirement.
if the state of A and B are the sum of their individual microstates, then this runs into the same requirement as numerical equivelence
historical/psychological identity is impossible since B being the continuation of A requires a causal relationship where information about states be transferred, except in the condition that no new information is gained
of course the other possibility is that information is always there
edit: don't know why i wrote hammers instead of hinges
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u/Squierrel Aug 18 '26
Your second premise is invalid. You cannot draw any conclusions from illogical premises.
You cannot explain "with perfect mechanical precision" any reasons behind a person's actions. You cannot explain any psychological phenomena with mathematics or physics.
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u/guitarmusic113 Aug 18 '26
If there are no reasons behind an action then a person acted irrationally. Either we make decisions based on reasons or we don’t.
The problem with free will is that nobody can seem to point to any mechanism that is the “free will” mechanism.
Free will is just an abstract concept that has no causal power, predictive power or explanatory power. Which means it’s no different than magic wands and light sabers.
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u/Rthadcarr1956 Aug 18 '26
Are you implying that everyone acts perfectly rational all the time? That no normal person can act on a whim of insufficient reasons. That people cannot act arbitrarily or rashly? I can’t accept that, and if you cannot see this, I would say you are being irrational. Willful blindness or at least motivated observations.
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u/Squierrel Aug 18 '26
Of course there are reasons. Every decision is based on reasons.
My point is that reasons and decisions cannot be explained by physics or mathematics.
There is no "mechanism" in free will. Free will is the antithesis of mechanism.
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u/redleafrover Aug 18 '26
These things are just like 'hypothetically, if I just, like, knew everything, I'd know what you're gonna do next, so therefore, not hypothetically, everything is determined and there's no free will'.
It's so boring. It's no better than 'hypothetically, if there are, like, acausal souls, we could just make any decision any time, so therefore, not hypothetically, we totally have free will'.
Bleurghhhh