Proof of nonexistence of free will

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Note that "free will" is a social concept predominantly used in the accountability for social behaviour. In that sense the word "control" applies. All the above discussion equating "free will (social)" with "choice (psychological)" amounts to what Wittgenstein would have dismissed as geschwatz (worthless chatter).

Well, ..and I suppose this response could also be regarded as geschwatz... the social and the psychological don't seem to me to be wholly unrelated realms, concepts aside. (...how could concepts be placed aside, you say?...well, how accessible are the "realms" to the different concepts, I might ask? Please note, I am not unfamiliar to the idea of aspect-dawn.) "Free will" does not seem as if it is only a social concept...it seems to be an idea, its success aside, in all of the areas in which it is found useful to whatever a degree. Why else is it found in areas in which it might otherwise not occur? If "free will" is meant in a merely social sense in the forgoing comments, then I will amend my statements. If it is not, then things are more complicated than "improper usage"...it implies multiple usage.

Don't mean to seem bitchy...I'm still a big fan, fresco.

1 Reply

@litewave,

litewave wrote:

There are basically two kinds of factors that determine your choice:

Group 1: desires (intentions)
Group 2: all other factors

There are basically two kinds of factors that determine your choice:

Group 1: force
Group 2: all other factors

There are basically two kinds of factors that determine your choice:

Group 1: guilt
Group 2: all other factors

There are basically two kinds of factors that determine your choice:

Group 1: Shame
Group 2: all other factors

There are basically two kinds of factors that determine your choice:

Group 1: Sh1ts and giggles
Group 2: all other factors

There are basically two kinds of factors that determine your choice:

Group 1: gravity
Group 2: all other factors

There are basically two kinds of factors that determine your choice:

Group 1: Paranoid Schizophrenia
Group 2: all other factors

There are basically two kinds of factors that determine your choice:

Group 1: Demonic Possession
Group 2: all other factors

There are basically two kinds of factors that determine your choice:

Group 1: Intestinal Gas
Group 2: all other factors

There are basically two kinds of factors that determine your choice:

Group 1: peer pressure
Group 2: all other factors

etc...

2 Replies

@Razzleg,

Wittgenstein would ask in what contexts do we use "free will" ?

We don't for example normally say "I exercised my free will in choosing this tie"....we use "choice". This revelation of different contextual usage implies non-equivalence of meaning, for W.

And from another angle, social descriptions of behaviour like "a dog begging food" simply cannot be captured or explained by reductionist analysis in terms of "causal" psychological or physiological processes. The issue of Gestalt arises... the contextual whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

2 Replies

@GoshisDead,

GoshisDead wrote:

There are basically two kinds of factors that determine your choice:

Group 1: Demonic Possession
Group 2: all other factors

There are basically two kinds of factors that determine your choice:

Group 1: Intestinal Gas
Group 2: all other factors

Are you pretending that these are two different things? En garde!

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Wittgenstein would say in what contexts do we use "free will" ?

We don't for example normally say "I exercised my free will in choosing this tie"....we use "choice". This revelation of different usage implies non-equivalence of meaning, for W.

And from another angle, social descriptions of behaviour like "a dog begging food" simply cannot be captured or explained by reductionist analysis in terms of "causal" psychological or physiological processes. The issue of Gestalt arises... the contextual whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

I imagine that Wittgenstein would ask someone who asked him whether he chose his tie of his (Wittgenstein's ) free will, "What makes you think that I am being forced to choose this tie?" For to ask whether someone chose to do something of his own free will is to ask whether he was being forced to do that thing. At least that is what it means in English.

1 Reply

@Razzleg,

ROFL I've made chili that could make one seem like the other and I've been to sermons that could make one seem like the other.

1 Reply

@kennethamy,

You correctly identify the culpability/responsibility context of "free will" which defence lawyers attempt to negate in pleading "mitigating circumstances".

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Wittgenstein would ask in what contexts do we use "free will" ?

We don't for example normally say "I exercised my free will in choosing this tie"....we use "choice". This revelation of different contextual usage implies non-equivalence of meaning, for W.

And from another angle, social descriptions of behaviour like "a dog begging food" simply cannot be captured or explained by reductionist analysis in terms of "causal" psychological or physiological processes. The issue of Gestalt arises... the contextual whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

I suppose that my response (which you partially respond to in your non-reductionist way,) is that norms are regulated historically. So when "free will" is introduced into an unusual debate it is not simply a matter of inappropriateness, but rather a matter of, "how is the idea currently being regulated?" I'm not opposed to holistic descriptions of causal events, I just require that they be inclusive, rather than exclusive. It seems to me that Wittgenstein stopped short, rather than venture pluralist metaphysical claims. Individual language games are not a sufficient definition of terms for me when referring to ideas that seem inter-contextual.

Perhaps I am being thick, I'm not sure...

1 Reply

@GoshisDead,

GoshisDead wrote:

ROFL I've made chili that could make one seem like the other and I've been to sermons that could make one seem like the other.

Oh, I'd give your chili a sermon. Although it would probably be after consuming it, and it would mostly sound like, "brrrrrrrrrp".

1 Reply

@Razzleg,

I do make a mean chili

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

You correctly identify the culpability/responsibility context of "free will" which defence lawyers attempt to negate in pleading "mitigating circumstances".

Well, since I expect that lawyers also speak English, that is also what they mean by doing something of one's own free will. But everyone who speaks English (not philosophese) denies that he was compelled to do something when he says that he did that thing of his own free will. Not only lawyers.

0 Replies

@Razzleg,

The OP is about "nonexistence of free will". Those who argue for this do so on the basis that "free will" is "an illusion", and that all "behaviour" can be reduced to a succession of deterministic events. The fallacy is that "behaviour" can be described without reference to particular psychological and social context, both of which resist mechanistic explanation on Gestalt grounds. This point is valid irrespective of whether you attempt to equate "free will" with "choice", which is a minor reductionist game with respect to the overall issue.

As a total diversion, I am reminded of the Goon Show (UK radio) episode about Eccles (village idiot) applying for a job as a BBC announcer.

Interviewer: Isn't that a Cambridge tie you are wearing ?
Eccles: Yep !
Interviewer: What were you doing at Cambridge ?
Eccles: Buying this tie !

1 Reply

@GoshisDead,

I like a mean chili, but I prefer a cruel chili (in preference to kind chilis).., but surely no free chili could be self-consciously mean...I claim to disprove causation by means of chili! Who will argue with me????

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@fresco,

fresco wrote:

The OP is about "nonexistence of free will". Those who argue for this do so on the basis that "free will" is "an illusion", and that all "behaviour" can be reduced to a succession of deterministic events. The fallacy is that "behaviour" can be described without reference to particular psychological and social context, both of which resist mechanistic explanation on Gestalt grounds. This point is valid irrespective of whether you attempt to equate "free will" with "choice", which is a minor reductionist game with respect to the overall issue.

I don't disagree with you...my question, directed at you, was: whether the idea of "free will" was limited to a specific perspective via Gestalt methods? My basic premise is that different perspectives are not so isolated as to be impermeable to ideas from other viewpoints. Even if the definition of "free will" requires redefinition within the context of debate it's use cannot be disqualified, since its current use implies the current "proximity" of the different perspective. Ideas are "communicable" between otherwise self-sufficient points of view. Different perspectives may not be reducible to another, via aspect-dawn (my point being that aspect-dawn represents separation as much as proximity), but they may still share ideas between themselves. The effectiveness of ideas between perspectives, and the resulting effect on the roles of ideas, may be determined at a later date (this is probably not the thread for it.)

1 Reply

The term free will I think as argued by most here is too broad. Meaning they assume all things physically possible as a set of options on which the will can operate. However there are many filters through which these options must go in order to make it to even a subconscious choice. One's perception of available options is much more important than one's actual options. And this is where many people get bogged down. "Well X person could have just done this." Could they really have just done that? They couldn't have if they did not perceive it as an option. "Well its her own fault for staying with a man who beats her." Anyone who has ever met many truly battered woman will note that for them they did not even perceive leaving as an option, even when people were outright telling them that it is a preferred option. Other filters might be physical or mental disabilities, cultural influences, language, habit, ignorance. All of these things and many have been discussed on this thread are impediments to an ultimate free will, but to exercise and ultimate free will one must be omniscient. So we therefore must talk about a relative free will.

2 Replies

@GoshisDead,

Honestly, i agree with a lot of what you have said. And though i hate to agree with kennethamy, i also think that we have to regard "free will" as a matter of degree rather than as an absolute. i am very comfortable with regarding most "causal" networks as filters for change, rather than the compulsion for it. A factor in the "origin" of it, rather than the beginning. (Yeah, there are a lot of picky, bitchy semantics involved.)

On the other hand, i think that the definition of "free will" is not broad enough. But perhaps that, too, is a matter of semantics...

(In a totally unrelated note, i am done capitalizing "i" on this forum. It is a convention that i ignore elsewhere, and i plan on ignoring it here from now on...please forgive me my grammatical discrepancies...this is perhaps an indulgent grammatical move, but i judge it worth warning about, enacting, and as worthy of forgiveness, all three.)

1 Reply

@GoshisDead,

GoshisDead wrote:

The term free will I think as argued by most here is too broad. Meaning they assume all things physically possible as a set of options on which the will can operate. However there are many filters through which these options must go in order to make it to even a subconscious choice. One's perception of available options is much more important than one's actual options. And this is where many people get bogged down. "Well X person could have just done this." Could they really have just done that? They couldn't have if they did not perceive it as an option. "Well its her own fault for staying with a man who beats her." Anyone who has ever met many truly battered woman will note that for them they did not even perceive leaving as an option, even when people were outright telling them that it is a preferred option. Other filters might be physical or mental disabilities, cultural influences, language, habit, ignorance. All of these things and many have been discussed on this thread are impediments to an ultimate free will, but to exercise and ultimate free will one must be omniscient. So we therefore must talk about a relative free will.

I agree with you here. Freewill is faced with restrictions and any discussion must take place within those restrictions. The primary restriction being that any and all observation of freewill is confined to the period between birth and death.
Removal of options does not negate the existence of freewill, only further restricts the actions of freewill. Therefore freewill must exist independent of choice, but may only be observed when applied to choice.

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@Razzleg,

Sorry. I'm not familiar with "aspect-dawn" and google has drawn a blank so far.
Perhaps you could give an example.

1 Reply

@fresco,

fresco wrote:

Sorry. I'm not familiar with "aspect-dawn" and google has drawn a blank so far.
Perhaps you could give an example.

Sorry, "aspect-dawn" is a term used by Wittgenstein, and a couple of his commentators, as regards parallax perspectives and the transfer between them. The classic W. example is the old "rabbit/duck" illustration (i'm way to lazy to look up the section # in Philosophical Investigations.) The implication, as i understand it, is that certain perspectives are irreducible one to another despite sharing a single, manifold reality, ie totality. I am challenging this idea that, though different perspectives may be irreducible, the exchange of ideas are incommunicable between the two (suggesting that even the injection of an idea from one into the other in the process of an otherwise "meaningless" debate is not only, somehow, meaningful, but also practical.) This incommunicability is what i am challenging (i am repeating myself since i felt it was unclear in my previous sentence.)

1 Reply

@Razzleg,

I suspect your argument could amount to a tautology. The very fact that we note a "common substrate" for the rabbit/duck is another example of the point that any two items must simultaneously be both similar and different. Trivially, they are "the similar" because they are both objects of "a comparison" and "different" because there are "two".

What you are perhaps suggesting is that the "meaning" of the term "free will" can be "pulled" one way or the other by context, as in...

T/-\E C/-\T

..where ./-\ represents an ambiguous symbol half way between H and A.
But note that such "ambiguity" is contrived, or seen from a metalevel of juxtaposition. There in essence no meaning to the symbol itself outside of particular contexts. By extrapolation nor is there any meaning to "free will" per se outside of normal contexts.

Your "intercommunication" concept raisess the issue of social dynamics. Whereas it is correct that any two interlocutors can negotiate their own agreement as to meaning, they are both conditioned by "societal norms" hence in everyday scenarios such negotiation tends to be brief. It is only "philosophers" who adopt a metalevel of dialogue which wanders away from "norms".

1 Reply

Proof of nonexistence of free will

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