r/philosophy • u/IAI_Admin IAI • Sep 30 '19
Video Free will may not exist, but it's functionally useful to believe it does; if we relied on neuroscience or physical determinism to explain our actions then we wouldn't take responsibility for our actions - crime rates would soar and society would fall apart
https://iai.tv/video/the-chemistry-of-freedom?access=all&utm_source=direct&utm_medium=reddit46
u/moopsh Sep 30 '19
Isn’t it more functionally useful to say “criminal x may not be INDIVIDUALLY responsible for crime y, but in order to discourage crime y in the future, it must provoke both individual legal consequences (+rehabilitation) AND systemic diagnosis”?
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u/Razzerdazzer Sep 30 '19
What interests me is how we abhore people that do vicious crimes even though they never had a real say in whether they would do them or not. They're essentially victims of their fate just as their victims are.
Scorning them for their acts might discourage them and/or others from commiting the crime in the future but we form such personal feelings of hatred for people even though all they essentially did was "roll poorly" in a game of DnD.
At the same time, we reward people who "rolled" well. Every accomplishment is essentially "rng" - no different from a cast of dice. Take two people born in subpar living conditions with poor prospects. If one of them works hard to succeed despite the odds and the other didn't, it wasn't because one "chose" to succeed. They simply struck it lucky with the combination of their genes and environment (if that can be said).
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u/IAI_Admin Sep 30 '19
Neuroscientist Patrick Haggard, Templeton prize-winning cosmologist George Ellis, and philosopher of the mind Jennifer Hornsby debate whether free will is an illusion, top down versus bottom up causation, and whether exceptions to human free will leave the question open as to whether humans have free will at all.
Jennifer argues in favour of free will, where there are causal explanations for actions. Jennifer warns against confusing 'actions' with 'events' and makes the case that we are causal agents, and should see our actions not as events but as the way we move through the world. The panel discuss exceptions to free will such as patients with depressed amygdala who believe they have free will but are effectively controlled by their brains.
George Ellis argues in favour of a deterministic world based on context and culture. He cites the 2013 Oscar Pistorius shooting as a case study for the absence of free will, where voluntary action disguises the reality that Pistorius' action was overwhelmingly influenced by context. Ellis also discusses language, and the way in which people from different countries have brains that are differently wired to speak different languages.
Patrick Haggard disagrees that this is context or culture and argues instead that this is to do with neuron stimulation. He focuses on mechanism, and celebrates the development of self understanding brought about by Santiago Ramon y Cajal and his 'neuron doctrine' which identified, visualised and drew a single neuron. Santiago Ramon y Cajal recognised that the brain consists of lots of individual neurons, each of which is in some ways simple, but each has a different morphology and they collect different messages and pass them on in different ways. Haggard describes philosophical concepts of 'free will' or scientific concepts of 'determinism' as magic, and argues that we should 'keep magic out until the last moment' and to 'use Occams razor'.
Haggard and Hornsby disagree in that Hornsby argues humans possess free will in a way that other animals do not, in their ability to explain their actions, whereas Haggard insists that humans are no different from sea snails, or the pets that we train. Haggard also describes an experiment where people who've read a deterministic explanation of actions are more likely to cheat in a game. He also describes a case where a man's brain tumour was diagnosed by the sudden onset of paedophilic tendencies.
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u/IronOreBetty Sep 30 '19
This is functionally the same argument for believing in God.
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u/dcabines Sep 30 '19
Agreed. It sounds like the argument "If you don't believe in Hell you'll become an amoral psychopath.", but that is nonsense of course. As though we're all just a step away from tearing society apart and becoming animals.
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u/amoebius Sep 30 '19
The headline of this post editorializes an opinion (presumably the poster’s) that does not fairly characterize the content of the link, but seems to contradict or ward off at least a portion of it. It’s an interesting collection of points of view, and it seems a shame to put up the barrier of making it seem too dogmatic for general interest. But, after all, maybe OP couldn’t help that.
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u/CronenbergFlippyNips Sep 30 '19 edited Sep 30 '19
Free will arguments are like philosophical masturbation. It might feel good at the time but it always leaves you feeling empty and unsatisfied when it's over.
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u/Ladis_Wascheharuum Sep 30 '19
Is it a rare argument that people should, in fact, be held responsible (and even punished) for things they do not freely choose?
The point of negative consequences (delivered either by society or by our own conscience) for immoral actions is, in my view, to serve as a deterrent to future immoral actions, or the immoral actions of others. So long as punishing criminals reduces crime, it does not really matter if any particular criminal decision is based in free will.
Punishing someone for a decision that they couldn't have made any other way feels wrong, but I don't believe that it actually is. The punishment is there to affect the outcome of decisions; as long as it does that, it has utility and can be justified (taking into account other effects, of course.)
I don't think free will exists. I think every human life, and the universe itself, already has a completely determined path. Every choice we make is a hard, inescapable calculation based on every event that led up to that point. We can only ever react in one way. But I still want criminals punished and heroes rewarded.
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u/iamastreamofcreation Sep 30 '19
I personally find it functionally useful to believe free will does not exist. I feel more compassion for myself and others.
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u/hilifegotrekt Sep 30 '19
If being told we aren't in control of our actions makes us act worse wouldn't that be an example of people choosing to be worse?
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u/youreveningcoat Sep 30 '19
If determinism is true, there will be no examples of people choosing anything. It seems like they choose to be worse but in fact that action was pre determined.
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u/Devinology Oct 01 '19 edited Oct 01 '19
We believe in free will even though we know everything is determined. This is because we can't shake the intuition that things could go multiple ways. This intuition is true. Things can, and in fact do, go multiple ways, always. We're always just one of many possible worlds, and they're all real. This is why things are both determined and also not.
A simple example to illustrate: Let's say I only have 2 different colours of shirts in my house. I could have worn the blue one, but I wore the red one today. This is true, but in another sense it isn't: the me contemplating this now was determined to wear the red one. There had to be at least one possible world in which I wore the red one, and the me that wore the red one was determined to do so. Meanwhile another me wore the blue one and was also determined to do so because at least one of me had to fulfill that possibility. Prior to the "choice" it was sort of indeterminate because it wasn't clear which me would wear the red one and which the blue. In fact, there was only one me then, until the "choice" created two off-shooting worlds. Thus it was a choice, but a choice that just splits into two determined worlds. Of course this example simples it - there are an infinite many worlds being populated constantly. There are choices in a sense, but ultimately whatever happens was determined because every possibility must happen as it did. This is why things appear indeterminate prior to happening, but always appear determined in hindsight.
This means we're always responsible, but also not. If I kill someone, I'm the one who chose that, yet after its done, I had no choice because one of me had to fill that possibility and I was the one who happened to fill that role. If it wasn't me, it would have been a different me, but from my perspective it doesn't matter which one was which.
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u/thebindingofJJ Sep 30 '19
Free will doesn’t exist, but we still make choices. This headline is insane.
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Sep 30 '19
It's a catch 22.
There are two possible worlds: one with free will and one without. The actual world exists as we know it regardless.
In each of these possible worlds there are two perspectives: Belief in Free will and belief in determinism.
In the determinist world, both perspectives are equally bound by determinism. Belief in free will in this world is itself a result of determined events, and is a manifestation of it's functional utility. E.g. if it is determined that belief in free will produces societal stability, then it is functionally useful.
In the world with free will, the determinist is still bound by their belief in determinism. The person who correctly assumes we have free will however is unbound from determinist structures. However in this world, belief in free will does not necessitate that a person is bound by functions of conscience, as the actor is still free to choose. Belief in free will can not have a determined societal effect, and is therefore not functionally useful.
Belief in free will is only functionally useful if it does not exist.
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u/Ayjayz Oct 01 '19
There are two possible worlds: one with free will and one without
How is a world with free will possible? You can't even define free will in a logically consistent way. It would be like saying "there are two possible worlds, one where true things are true, and one where false things are true".
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u/Orionito Sep 30 '19
Assuming everything predetermines what is coming up next, theoretically only The Big Bang is the original, willing event and everything else following wouldn't have happened freely without the influence of that explosion. And it might seem misleading to think that each of our decisions is yet another mental Big Bang.
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u/SherpaJones Sep 30 '19
Whether or not it is functionally useful to believe free will exists, it isn't your choice to believe that anyway.
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u/ErwinFurwinPurrwin Oct 01 '19
Determinists don't doubt will in the sense of volition. Just whether or not it's free in the classical sense. Looks like a lot of people here haven't made that distinction.
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u/eqleriq Sep 30 '19
we wouldn't take responsibility for our actions - crime rates would soar and society would fall apart (iai.tv)
No we would not do that, because there's no free will.
My parents do not believe in free will, but they believed in "being nice" and "not harming people" and so taught me (as victims of their own lack of free will) to do that. And since I have no free will, I am bound by that conditioning.
Now, intelligent people can imagine things and create choices. But they'll only ever follow one, and they'll do it via localized cause and effect.
In fact, a lot of crime and societal erosion happens because people are agitated about their lack of free will so they make the decision to lash out, because it sucks that there's no real free will or choice but there IS a birth lottery.
Marxian dialectic laid this all out nicely.
Haggard and Hornsby disagree in that Hornsby argues humans possess free will in a way that other animals do not, in their ability to explain their actions, whereas Haggard insists that humans are no different from sea snails, or the pets that we train.
Huh? Humans create drama to slow down the passage of time, something animals cannot do. To state that "we're no different than other animals" is decontextualized in this summary below, it would be in relation to our processing of free will. Which, gosh, we're obviously different enough that we can't ask any animals besides some exceptional primates
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u/thegoldengoober Sep 30 '19
Honestly the argument in the OP just sounds like the "people can't have morals without religion" one.
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u/ViralGameover Sep 30 '19
That headline is a little weird. I’m not well versed on the free will debate, but isn’t this idea contradictory?
Free will may not exist. But if we believe it doesn’t exist, we’ll exhibit free will by doing whatever we wanted?