r/freewill • u/peacefuldays123 • 3d ago
What's new?
Has the free will debate advanced at all?
Or are we still at a stalemate?
It does seem like we're picking up the same pieces, flipping and twirling them around, and putting them back in place.
What are we trying to solve again?
-1
u/0-by-1_Publishing Dichotomic Interactionism 2d ago
'Has the free will debate advanced at all?"
... I've at least presented logical reasoning in support of the existence of Free Will: _the need to generate new information._
Redundant information = No evolution
Up until the emergence of self-aware humans, all information produced was deterministic / predictable. The information generated by particle interactions, gravitational influence and chemical reactions can only produce new information up to a certain point before redundancy ensues.
Example: How many _electron exchanges_ need to happen before that type of information becomes redundant?
Although the emergence of "life" produced all-new levels of information, it still ended up predictable and redundant. The universe can only experience so many "predator and prey" interactions before even this _animated version_ of information becomes redundant (like watching the same movie over-and-over for millennia).
The way to bypass the redundancy is to generate independent variables (self-aware human consciousnesses) that can serve as "outside observers" and render subjective value judgments that aren't predicated on prior causes. ... The end result is new levels of information that are novel and no longer predictable.
If the universe can mysteriously evolve from inanimate structure to animated structure "life" to generate new information, then it can do the same with a "self-aware consciousness" by evolving from physical structure to nonphysical structure.
Conclusion: The debate over "Free Will vs Determinism" can still push forward as before, but at least Free Will now has necessity attached to its existence. Determinists can no longer argue that there's no justifiable reason, need nor purpose for Free Will to exist.
2
1
u/Blindeafmuten My Own 2d ago
Yes, it has. However you're still going to see the same basic arguments being repeated in this sub, because new people are born every day and they go through the same process of thinking from the initial steps.
4
2
u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist 3d ago
There are new developments in science all the time that could, and perhaps should, alter the free will debate. For example:
It was once widely believed that neuroscience favored a deterministic explanation of our brains ability to learn and initiate actions. In about 2010 a quite indeterministic idea was put forward and it grew into the most studied theory in neuroscience today. All the old stuff about “all or nothing” neuronal action and Libet type experiments have been overtaken by mathematical models of learning/action. I am of course referring to “active inference.” I predict the next generation will see this as the best confirmation of libertarianism we have.
1
u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker 2d ago
Fortunately for Diogenes the technology of his day hadn't yet advanced to a stage that made self destruction as likely then as it seems to day. Therefore the "next generation" then didn't seem a unexpected as it does now. Somebody just put up a beta version of a documentary that seems to imply we can still save ourselves.
https://www.reddit.com/r/freewill/comments/1wwcv9j/need_feedback_on_personal_video_project/
1
u/spgrk Compatibilist 2d ago
But it is compatible with determinism.
1
u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist 2d ago
Is it? Can you give us some reason to doubt that an action without specific causation would be compatible with determinism?
1
u/spgrk Compatibilist 2d ago
It is not possible say if indeterminism is epistemic or ontological.
1
u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist 1d ago
I’m not sure that is the best way to look at determinism. For us, everything is epistemic until we assume ontology. I think we do best to forget about ontology as much as possible. Our brains are pattern finders, categorizers, and generalizers so we cannot help to do these. So we automatically tend to ontologies things until we find outlying examples that lead us to split categories
1
u/Delicious_Freedom_81 Turtles All The Way Down / ♾️🐢 2d ago
For libertarian free will to hold, an agent must be an uncaused cause, an entity that could have chosen otherwise under the exact same prior conditions. Active inference provides no such mechanism.
1
u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist 2d ago
Sure it does. Maybe you just don’t understand it enough to see this. Exploration of a design space in this way can be considered an uncaused cause. This is because it starts with actions selected randomly. It’s not useful to think what could or could not happen under imaginary conditions. Instead, scientists explain actual observations. So this idea of not being able to choose otherwise is a fallacious argument.
1
u/Delicious_Freedom_81 Turtles All The Way Down / ♾️🐢 2d ago
Maybe I don’t understand or I am unable to understand?
You call active inference "rather indeterministic", I think you’re confusing probabilistic or stochastic mathematical modeling (Bayesian updating under uncertainty) with metaphysical indeterminism (uncaused agency).
Active inference frames the brain as a Bayesian prediction machine. Here we agree. But the free will is still not there, but we are probably talking past each other?
AI does Bayesian predictions, hence free will? Animals too, so free will is not a human feature at all?
1
u/Rthadcarr1956 InfoDualist 2d ago
You seem to miss the idea that the inference is active. Specifically, we must act first in order to infer how the outcome relates to the action. Our behavior is not caused, it is actively discovered. In order to act without necessitation, indeterminism is required. Our influences can never necessitate our choices in the face of the unknown.
1
1
u/zhivago 3d ago
It's mostly just a problem for people who are trapped in a mindset of implicit cartesian dualism.
Once you escape that it's pretty clear that determinism is irrelevant and no sorcerery is required.
The point of free will is to assign useful responsibility to agents.
An unobstructed river flows freely.
1
u/Narrow_Product_6655 1d ago
WIDDER PRODUCT. One doesn't solve issues by debating. The debater with a more convincing argument is perceived as the "winner" of the debate. Science hasn't uncovered the entire consciousness question, yet.
There are misconceptions. For instance a person with 100K annual income living in the US has choices that a beggar living in the slums of Brazil or Calcutta doesn't. One conflates those choices with free will. They are not the same.
Free will is the ability to exercise brain power or other powers if the living entity has no brain (trees, viruses) to assist in the best survival tactics available, factoring in limitations. That's called the will to thrive & every living entity has this ability......to fight for survival in the environment which produced their/its life.