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CCC comments on Rationality Quotes Thread September 2015 - Less Wrong
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Ah. The presence of an omniscient, omnipotent being is important to the proof, but it is not the only element in that proof (the other elements are taken from observation of the universe, and are less controversial).
Consider; if an omnipotent, omniscient being exists, then it must take one of three stances with regard to humanity. It must either support the existence of humanity, or it must be neutral towards humanity, or it must support the non-existence of humanity. Since the being is omnipotent, if God wanted to wipe out humanity, God could (one or two well-placed asteroids a couple of million years back would have done it easily). Thus, I conclude that God is either in support of, or neutral towards humanity.
Now I also observe the universe around me, looking for traces of maliciousness in the laws of physics. So far, I have not found any. This implies that God is not into casual, petty cruelty without reason. It seems therefore likely that God is, at the very least, not evil.
The complete cessation of an intelligence would seem to be a great evil. Therefore, I postulate that there is a very strong probability that God has put some measures in place to prevent this. The measure most likely is some sort of afterlife; somewhere that a person can continue to survive, but not communicate back to those they leave behind.
Of course, this argument does not say that an afterlife is certain, given the existence of God, merely that it seems likely.
As to free will; here, I note that humans are demonstrably capable of the sort of casual cruelty that is absent from the laws of nature. Moreover, humans are capable of opposing each other. This strongly implies that at least some humans are capable of opposing what God wants. (This does not necessarily imply that said opposition has any chance of long-term success). This, in turn, seems to imply that humans do have some capacity to decide for themselves; hence, free will.
If the absence of maliciousness in the laws of physics is good evidence that God is not evil, is the absence of benevolence in the laws of physics good evidence that God is not good?
That would be a reasonable argument to make.
I would follow it up by claiming that the existence of free will is evidence of benevolence in the laws of physics.
With what definition of "free will"?
"Free will" consists of the ability of a person to determine their own future actions by some entirely internal process (which can observe, but is not controlled by, external factors); where "person" is defined as a collection of stuff such that the collection of stuff that makes up you has no overlap with the collection of stuff that makes up me and neither of us have any overlap with the collection of stuff that makes up (say) Barack Obama, or Trevor Noah, or Jacob Zuma.
Do you understand "is not controlled by" in such a way that having "free will" is inconsistent with (1) purely deterministic physics and/or (2) purely deterministic+random physics? (On the face of it your definition makes free will inconsistent with #1 but not with #2, but I can e.g. imagine a definition that restricts those "external factors" to, say, the state of the world outside one's body in at most the last year, in which case "free will" might be compatible with outright determinism.)
I don't think that free will can be reconciled with purely deterministic physics - free will implies that, in exactly the same situation, with each and every particle in exactly the same space, I can still choose whether to purchase those biscuits or not.
On the other hand, my decision whether or not to purchase those biscuits is not exactly random, either. There are a number of factors that go into it - in fact, considering force of habit, quite a few of my decisions are extremely predictable. So I'm not sure that random physics is entirely reconcilable either.
OK. So, do you consider that you actually have good evidence for the existence of free will in this sense? If so, what is that evidence?
The obvious alternative hypothesis, which seems to me to explain all the evidence I know of just as well, is that at the level of physics there's nothing but determinism and maybe randomness, but it looks different to us because we can't see all the details. We think "I could have done otherwise in the exact same situation" because we have seen ourselves and others do different things in very similar-looking situations, we can imagine making a different decision in what feels like the same situation, etc.; but we don't get to observe the exact states of all the particles that compose us and the world around us, and what we think of as "the same situation" may actually be quite different in its details. We also don't get to observe the mechanisms that lead to our making whatever choices we do, so those choices feel like opaque black-box miracles to us. No magical contra-causal free will is required for things to look this way to us.
I did think I had a good argument for free will (given the existence of God), but TheAncientGeek has punctured that. (I had a second argument as well, but I'm waiting to see whether TheAncientGeek has any comment on that one).
Aside from that, all I've really got is that:
(a) What I do feels like free will; that may be an illusion. (b) What other people do is consistent enough to suggest that their actions are being guided by individual, similarly free-willed minds.
...both of which are fairly weak evidence, if anything.
It's clear that if you put someone in very similar situations and ask them to make a choice, over time they will converge to making a certain choice a certain percentage of the time. That could easily be the same percentage of the time that would be predicted by deterministic physics plus e.g. quantum uncertainty, so I don't see any reason in principle why your account of free will could not be consistent with everything happening according to the laws of physics, if there is randomness in the laws of physics.
As for the feeling, if a deterministic chess computer had feelings, it would have to have the feeling that it could make any move it wanted, because if it didn't feel that way, it couldn't consider all the possibilities, and it can't decide on a move without considering all the possibilities. This doesn't prevent chess computers from being deterministic, so it might not prevent you from having a feeling like that, even if your actions are in fact deterministic.