I don’t always enjoy being interviewed, but I do always enjoy being interviewed by the thoughtful and provocative (in the best way!) Bob Murphy. You’ll see why if you listen to the latest episode of the Bob Murphy show, where we discuss why there is something instead of nothing.
Although this is intended primarily as an audio podcast, those who prefer video can watch here.
Thanks for posting this. One question that comes up for me when I listen to your presentations, and again with this podcast, is: what is the implication of the mathematical universe to the free-will vs determinism debate? It seems to me a mathematical universe can be compatible with either proposition, so maybe there is no implication. I’m interested in what you think about it.
Henri Hein: I started to type something along the lines of “I’ve never understood what is meant by ‘the free-will vs determinism’ debate. Why can’t we have both?”. Then I remembered that once upon a time, I *did* think there was some sort of conflict here, so I guess I shouldn’t use the word “never”. But I can’t remember what I was thinking back then (if I was thinking anything at all).
The only meaningful way I can find to interpret the phrase “I have free will” is that it means “My intentions are good predictors of my actions”. This seems to me to be so self-evidently true that I don’t see how anyone (including my past self) could doubt it.
The only meaningful way I can find to interpret the word “determinism” is that means something like “Given the state of the universe at time t, there is only one possible state it can be in at time t+1”. This is problematic in many ways, not least of which is that “the universe at time t” is pretty hard to parse in a world governed by relativity. But I am entirely comfortable with the idea that something sort of like this could be true, provided it could be re-worded to make some sense.
Given those interpretations, I cannot see any conflict between free will and determinism. So those who claim to see a conflict are either seeing something I’m missing, or interpeting those phrases differently in some way that makes sense (which I cannot currently fathom), or interpreting them differently in a way that does not make sense, or just not thinking very hard at all. I believe my own past self fell into the last of these categories.
Steve Landsburg:
Thanks for the comments. I understand the deterministic position to be pretty much as you describe, but I have to qualify it by admitting I lean towards the free will position myself, and naturally it’s harder to understand and explain the position I disagree with. I also understand that Relativity complicates the story somewhat, but that it’s probably a surmountable complication, for either theory.
One thing I am uncertain about is whether determinism is a linear or stochastic progression. These are my own terms and may not be great. What I mean by linear determinism is the situation where there is precisely one configuration of the universe (or local conditions) at time t+1, given a configuration at time t. Like a clock. The stochastic situation is where there is a range of possible configurations at time t+1, but following a precise distribution in terms of possibilities and probabilities. More like an engine: a given move of a piston will displace a certain amount of fuel and air within a narrow range, but the precise number of molecules will change a bit between each piston move.
I think this distinction is potentially significant in a way that indicates to me that the deterministic position holds it works the first way (what I call linear determinism). The reason can be illustrated with my choice of ice cream: let’s say I am choosing between Black Walnut and Coffee, and that I choose Coffee 70% of the time. I am in the parlor at Friday 1.02PM. The stochastic position says I am 70% likely to choose Coffee. The linear position says that while I choose Coffee 70% of the time I visit the parlor, 13 billion years ago when this universe started, it was already established what I was going to choose Friday 1.02PM. What seems significant here is that if there is a girl in the parlor on the Friday afternoon that also likes Black Walnut, who would talk to me if I happened to choose Black Walnut that afternoon and ignore me otherwise, and if she did talk to me, we would fall in love and have kids together, then in a stochastic progression of the universe, discrete events can have significant impact on future events. Whereas in linear determinism, it was given for 13 billion years whether I was going to meet the girl or not.
The other thing that strikes me is that while I like your definition of free will, I don’t think it describes what determinists call illusion of free will. I feel on firmer ground here, because I do think I understand what illusion of free will means. Maybe the debate should be called actual free will vs illusion of free will. The illusion, as I understand it, works like this: around the time you perform an action – either just after it, or while you are performing it, or just before performing it, but so briefly in advance that it is physically impossible to react to it – your brain re-configures itself to believe it was instrumental in the decision to carry out the action, whereas in reality, the brain was not involved at all. You will carry out the action regardless of what your brain is doing. This does not sound like intentions being a predictor of actions.
Apologies for the lengthy comment, but I find this stuff fascinating.
Steve is using the term free will differently than many. This is a very active debate. Going back to Calvin, he wrestled with the idea of predetermination because God knows all and free will. Hobbes on the other hand thought free will was simply not being impeded from doing what you want. This is somewhat parallel to current arguments about determinism and free will.
Some argue that moral responsibility depends on free will, but what do we mean by free will?
One form of free will is libertarian free will. This says that given the same situation, the agent could have made a different decision – the freedom to do otherwise. If you could go back to a point in time, with everything physical exactly the same, somehow you could have done something different.
Some explanations require a non-physical thing like a soul. Others suggest that some non-deterministic quantum effects give room for different outcomes. I am not sure how the non-deterministic quantum effects could be called free will, but it does possibly allow for different outcomes.
This is sometimes used as evidence *for* a soul. I appear to have free will, therefore I have libertarian free will, therefore there must be a soul. Classic begging the question argument.
Compatibilists argue that this is not the sort of freedom needed for moral responsibility.
Some avoid getting bogged down in metaphysics by saying we have will rather than free will. I do what I will, and exactly how “free” that will is is not the point.
You seem to hold the compatibilist position – essentially, free will is the ability to do what one wants rather than the ability do have done otherwise.
It reminds me somewhat of the arguments about whether identity is an illusion. there is no “I” we can reasonably define, there may be no identity, but it is an illusion. Nevertheless, we all act as though it were real, and probably we have no choice in the matter.
I think the free will and determinism discussions are more fruitful when we think of both free will and determinism as being relative propositions as well as absolute ones. Indeterministic-to-deterministic is not an either/or, it is a spectrum along which things change in accordance with changes in knowledge.