If there's a distinction you're making between libertarian free will and "indeterminism-based" free will, sorry but I'm not aware of the distinction
indeterminism based free will is naturalsitic libertarian FW
Then separate the indeterministic parts of a system from the deterministic parts, and the argument still applies: You can't determine the probabilities of the indeterministic parts, therefore you can't control them, therefore the more indeterministics parts there are, the less becomes your maximum-possible control over the whole.
That depends what you mean by "you". That your brain thinks thoughts does not mean that you, the person, are not thinking thoughts. Decisions made by your neural subsystems are made by your, the person. You (some homunculus?) don;t need to pre-think your thoughts for them to be yours, not do you need to pre-choose your choices.
If you have any control, it must be over the parts and over the extent you can determine the probabilities
What does "you" mean there?
in short the more deterministic something is, the more the maximum-possible control you can determine it >is. This again seem pretty self-evident to me.
A deterministic brain might be a nice toy for an immateria homunculujs, but we are dealing with naturalism here. We are dealing with how a system can choose between possible actions. indeterminism means the possibiltieis are real possibilities.
The more the outcome of D is determined by A, the more control those preferences, values, ethics (in short the person) has over B.
But where's the choice?
That your brain thinks thoughts does not mean that you, the person, are not thinking thoughts. Decisions made by your neural subsystems are made by your, the person.
Of course, that's my whole point. That my brain is making choices doesn't means that I'm not making choices.
If you have any control, it must be over the parts and over the extent you can determine the probabilities
What does "you" mean there?
It doesn't matter for the purpose of the question. No matter how you define yourself, my statement still applies. Personally I'd define it...
I'm participating in a university course on free will. On the online forum, someone asked me to summarise Eliezer's solution to the free will problem, and I did it like this. Is it accurate in this form? How should I change it?
“I'll try to summarise Yudkowsky's argument.
As Anneke pointed out, it's kinda difficult to decide what the concept of free will means. How would particles or humans behave differently if they had free will compared to if they didn't? It doesn't seem like our argument is about what we actually expect to see happening.
This is similar to arguing about whether a tree falling in a deserted forest makes any noise. If two people are arguing about this, they probably agree that if we put a microphone in the forest, it would pick up vibrations. And they also agree that no-one is having the sense experience of hearing the tree fall. So they're arguing over what 'sound' means. Yudkowsky proposes a psychological reason why people may have that particular confusion, based on how human brains work.
So with respect to free will, we can instead ask the question, “Why would humans feel like they have free will?” If we can answer this well enough, then hopefully we can dissolve the original question.
It feels like I choose between some of my possible futures. I can imagine waking up tomorrow and going to my Engineering lecture, or staying in my room and using Facebook. Both of those imaginings feel equally 'possible'.
Humans execute a decision making algorithm which is fairly similar to the following one.
List all your possible actions. For my lecture example, that was “Go to lecture” and “Stay home.”
Predict the state of the universe after pretending that you will take each possible action. We end up with “Buck has learnt stuff but not Facebooked” and “Buck has not learnt stuff but has Facebooked.”
Decide which is your favourite outcome. In this case, I'd rather have learnt stuff. So that's option 2.
Execute the action associated with the best outcome. In this case, I'd go to my lecture.
Note that the above algorithm can be made more complex and powerful, for example by incorporating probability and quantifying your preferences as a utility function.
As humans, our brains need the capacity to pretend that we could choose different things, so that we can imagine the outcomes, and pick effectively. The way our brain implements this is by considering those possible worlds which we could reach through our choices, and by treating them as possible.
So now we have a fairly convincing explanation of why it would feel like we have free will, or the ability to choose between various actions: it's how our decision making algorithm feels from the inside.”