From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: FREE WILL 2: Neither a Determinist nor an Indeterminist be.
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 05:45:41 GMT

[rh] = Randall Holmes; [ds] = David Spurrett; [nr] = Neil Rickert.

[rh] I agree with Spurrett that "free will" involves the notion that one
[rh] chooses an action and could have chosen otherwise.  But this is not
[rh] incompatible with determinism if one chooses the sense of possibility
[rh] correctly.  The sense in which the agent could have acted otherwise is
[rh] that _so far as he knows_ he could have acted otherwise.  This makes
[rh] sense in a deterministic universe because of incomplete information.
[rh] [.....]

[ds]I disagree fundamentally. Certainly there are many senses of possibility, but
[ds]the sense relevant to `free will' is not what is sometimes called `epistemic'
[ds]possibility, as suggested by Holmes.

[nr]But surely Randall's "free will" is all that you can ask for.  After
[nr]all you cannot know that which you cannot know.  There is no way of
[nr]determining if there is any other type of free will.

[ds]Surely?  WHY?  I see no point in responding to dollops of positivist
[ds]cant which are not dignified with even token arguments.

It seemed pointless to argue the obvious.  But apparently I am mistaken
in assuming you would see this as obvious.

Let's assume Randall's condition - that as far as one knows, one has
free will.  Now here are two possible scenarios:

     A.	Your free will is real.

     B.	Reality is deterministic, and all future events are determined
	by the current state of the universe.  Among these determined
	events are that you will believe that you have a free choice
	in all your decisions, and you will always believe that you
	could have chosen otherwise.

Now how can you distinguish between these scenarios?  In both cases you
will have the "knowledge" that you chose, and that you could have chosen
otherwise.  What empirical tests will you use to distinguish between
them?  Keep in mind that under scenario B, the tests are in effect
already determined, and the results are already determined to be such
as to convince you that you have free will.

[ds]                                                         I am attempt-
[ds]ing to initiate a conceptual investigation into the tenability of a
[ds]non-deterministic account of causation.  This follows from an analysis
[ds]of the doctrine of `free will' and determinism, and takes place in the
[ds]light of an explicitly realist position which says, in essence, that I
[ds]think the question about `free will' to be as much scientific as
[ds]philosophical.

And I am trying to point out that there is no scientific test that
can settle the question.

[ds]                Crystal-hugging attempts to `plug' free will into
[ds]violations of the laws of physics, or inept interpretations of QM are
[ds]all rejected at the outset.  All of this is conducted through _arguments_.

I'm not interested in basing free will on violations of physics or on
quantum phenomena.  I agree with you that such approaches are suspect,
and I agree with Randall that such approaches are unnecessary.

[ds]Which is the bit which bothers you?  And `surely' in a philosophy
[ds]group it would be good form to say _why_?

I am merely puzzled that what seems so obvious to me appears to not have
even occurred to you.

[ds]This is, perhaps, well illustrated by
[ds]looking at the way we deal with attributions of responsibility.  If I believe
[ds]of a person who stole my watch that that person _thought_ s/he could have
[ds]chosen not to take the watch, but was in fact mistaken then I cannot con-
[ds]sistently hold him/her responsible.

[nr]This argument is surely irrelevant.  Randall was not talking about belief
[nr]but about knowledge.  In other words, the situation is that as far as
[nr]the thief knew, he had the free will not to steal your watch, and as
[nr]far as you know he had that same free will.

[ds]How can the thief have free will `as far as I know' when part of my
[ds]`knowledge' is determinism?

If you wish to assume a universe in which the thief does not have
free will, but you do have the free will to decided whether to blame
him or not, then that is a bizarre assumption.  I pity you for it,
for surely all the thieves will soon discover that you are a great
target since you will not press charges against them.

[ds]                             When two items in our knowledge have dif-
[ds]ferent implications about the `same' thing, then we cannot cheerfully
[ds]continue to believe both _if_ we are concerned with truth.

You are assuming that there is such a thing as a "truth" about the
question.  But the existence of such a "truth" is by no means certain.

[ds]                                                            I remember
[ds]you claiming (in your posting <1992Nov5.183959.29975@mp.cs.niu.edu> in
[ds]the `FREE WILL 1' thread) that the only reason for holding to a prin-
[ds]ciple of non-contradiction was `religous belief.'  I followed up in
[ds]detail, and asked a number of questions on this point none of which
[ds]you seem to have replied to.

I took your questions as rhetorical posturing rather than as substantive
questions.  I apologise for my misinterpretation.  As I explained above,
there is no scientific test that can settle the question you are raising
about free will.  It seems to me that this makes it a question of religion
rather than one of science.

[ds]If I have a car, but do not understand the engine, then (even though I
[ds]believe in determinism) in terms of the view you defend above, I would
[ds]have to regard my car as _free_ to breakdown, and would be justified
[ds]in holding it responsible for my getting to a meeting late.  Ho Hum.

I certainly was not suggesting this.  There is much evidence to suggest
that cars do not have free will.  Your car is not at all like you.  But
the thief is physically very much like you, and presumably built on the
same organizational principles.  It therefore makes little sense for
you to assume that you have free will but the thief does not.  There is
no such conflict in assuming that your car does not have free will.

[nr]Thus, based on everything
[nr]you know, you should hold him responsible.  But if in some interpretation
[nr]of how the universe works it happens that the thief was not free, then
[nr]in that same interpretation you yourself are not free to decide not to
[nr]hold him responsible either.  To put it in other terms, your ability to
[nr]choose whether to hold him responsible is itself the evidence you need
[nr]to conclude that he was responsible.

[ds](ii) Your last sentence surely involves conflict with the rest of your 
[ds]posting.  You talk about what my `ability to choose' proves, which makes 
[ds]sense to me as a statement on its own, but when looked at in the light of 
[ds]the rest of your posting seems to contradict your claim that we cannot in 
[ds]fact choose, but that incomplete knowledge lets us think we can.

Perhaps you are confusing me with someone else.  I never said that "we
cannot in fact choose, but that incomplete knowledge lets us think we
can."  All I said is that believing we can choose is sufficient for free
will.  I make no assertion either way on whether we can in fact choose,
for I consider it to be a meaningless question.

Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,talk.religion.misc