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TheAncientGeek comments on Philosophical schools are approaches not positions - Less Wrong Discussion
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That is exactly what naturalistic libertarians dispute. Here "clearly" means not "can be seen to be true at a glance", but "seems true when not thought about too much". The argument is on a par with "saying that of course things can travel faster than light, I don't see what is stopping them"? The SEP quote does not preclude non-obvious claims.
Wrong way round. Naturalistic libertarians are proposing empirically testable claims, the opponents who seek to reject their claims using the One-Line Argument are the ones using intuition. (Of course,naturalistic libertarians also have opponents who can make a detailed and informed critique).
When I say that:
Here is what I mean.
Our free will is clearly partially predictable. We are somewhat rational and highly consistent actors, not random noise generators. I can predict what I'll do in various situations, and even what other people will do, much better than by chance.
Now of course you might say the predictable part comes from ordinary physics, and the unpredictable element is free will. But if free will is equated to pure random noise, I really don't think it's doing any useful work anymore except for saying "the universe isn't deterministic". It doesn't match the intuition we started out trying to explain.
What do nat-libs claim? Do they think free will is 'entirely random' or 'entirely unpredictable' (which may be slightly different), and what do they use those words to mean, exactly?
If free will means the ability to do things that aren't entirely determined by previous and external circumstances, then partial randomness explain free will. If free will means having an inner homuncular self that is the ultimate source of deciion making, then it doesn't. Note the difference between the two definitions..one describes a kind of outcome or manifestation of free will, the other defines a possible underlying mechanism for it..in fact, a supernaturalistic mechanism. Natualistic liberatarians aren't beholden to defend a non-naturalistic theory of free will, so they are not obliged to defend the second definition of free will, only the first.
No, they think it is partly random. See http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/two-stage_models.html
All two-stage models seem to have this in common: first there is a random, nondeterministic, unpredictable, or 'free' stage, which generates possibilities. Then there is a rational, at least partially predictable 'will' stage which chooses an action from the possibilities presented.
This might well be a good neurological or psychological model of decision making. (Although I'd expect the actual implementation to have multiple sources of suggestions, and multiple modules and layers of filtering and choosing.) I just don't see what it has to do with "free will".
All discussion of "free will" starts with the fact that we feel like we are freely choosing from possible alternatives. It doesn't matter here how the alternatives were generated: when presented with a multiple choice test, where the alternatives are fixed, we still we're exercising free will in answering it. Why does it help to specify that the generation of possibilities is random?
(Some of) the philosophers quoted in your link say the benefit is being able to choose otherwise in exactly identical repeating circumstances (e.g. simulation reruns) because the generation of alternatives is not deterministic. I don't see why that would be a good thing: it just means that some of the time you won't generate an alternative that you would have chosen in those runs where you did generate - in other words, you lose out because you don't or can't generate all the alternatives all the time.
If the generation process is thought to be completely random, and the selection process completely deterministic, I don't see how this matches an intuition of "free will". (Granted, arguing about intuitions is usually silly in the first place and assumes too much about the typical mind.)
So what are the empirical claims these models make? At least, that we should find in the brain a separation between random generation of ideas (e.g. amplification of chance or chaotic events) and rational selection of outcomes. That would be a great day for the neuro sciences. I just don't think it would convince anyone about anything regarding "free will" or the lack thereof. (After all, philosophers kept believing in free will even when physicists were quite sure the universe was deterministic...)
it might be the case that the issue "starts with" the feeling of being able to make choices, but it starts in the sense that what the debate is about is the most direct interpretation of this feeling that we actually can make free choices. The debate is about what causes, or underlies, or best explains the feeling. For centuries there has been a debate about the conflict between free will and determinism (or, earlier, between free will and divine omniscience or foreordination). That hasn't been centuries of people stupidly failing to notice that the feeling of freedom is trivially compatible with any amount of determinism so long as the feeling is taken to be an illusion.
How do you know? For what value of "free will"? It is now acknowledged that there are different concepts of free will. The compatibilist concept is about being able to make choices without external duress, so by that definition your answers are freely chosen so long as no one is pointing a gun at your head, or anything like that. But is is obvious that most people are free most of the time under that definition, so the historical debate cannot have been about that concept.
The incompatibilist concept of free will contains further conditions, in particular the condition that when we make a free choice we could have done otherwise. That is a straight contradicition to strict determinism, because under determinism, there is no way things could have been otherwise.
Because random possibilities are free from determination by past events, thus allowing that affairs in fact could be otherwise, that multiple real possibilities are actually available.
The point is to give an explanation of what the feeling of free choice seems, directly, to be, not to give an account of why it is valuable or optimal.
The generation process cant be completely random, the range of ideas you can generate has to be constrained by your past history and experience...a caveman can't come up with relativity.
A lot of philosophers kept believing in compatibilist free will, which is..well..compatible with determinsim. Very few kept believing in incompatibilist free will. In fact, the revival of incompatibilist libertarianism has come partly from physics, since the "news" that the universe isn't necessarily deterministic has filtered through very slowly to philosophy...Tony Dore, the Information Philosopher actually has a physics background.
Suppose we're in one of two possible worlds, and we don't know which. One is deterministic (or its random components are irrelevant to human choice) and has an illusion of free will. The other has 'real' free will, whether in a two-stage model or otherwise. The humans in both worlds have the same experiences and intuitions about free will.
How can we tell in which world we are? It would help if the fact of having this intuition was relevant evidence; after all, it's the only reason we're even investigating the subject. Is it evidence? And which way does it point? That's what I'd like to see addressed. Is there a specific argument that having this intuition is evidence that it is true?
This is just like the objection to p-zombies: they imply that the fact of consciousness isn't the cause of experiencing and talking about consciousness. Similarly, imagine p-fwills that behave the same as us and report the experience of free will, but they don't really have free will, they're just deterministic machines.
Two-stage models are supposed to make empirical predictions, so unlike p-zombies, we should be able to detect such creatures and differentiate them from us. One way to do this would be to prove that they are deterministic whereas we are not. But p-fwills have the same intuition as us about free will, so having free will isn't a cause of the intuition.
The question of whether having free will would be a cause of such an intuition is the one that should be settled proof.
Who cares whether we could have done otherwise? In real life we never actually experience the exact same circumstances twice, so why would whether or not we could do otherwise be causally related with us having the free will intuition, which is what we're trying to explain?
With naturalistic libertarianism you need to determine that physical indeterminism exists, which you can do with experiment based on EPR and Bell's theorem and suchlike, and you also need to verify that the brain uses indeterminiosm in some appropriate way. I stated earlier that naturalistic libertarians put forward falsifiable hypotheses.
That doesn't follow. In the FW universe, individuals could feel they have FW because they do, in the other, the feeling could be caused by something else.
I don't see why. The way fo verifying the existence of naturalistic FW I outlined above doesn't particularly dpeend on the feeling of FW, and could even be applied in a third hypothetical universe where FW exists, but people don't feel they have it.
That's the "starts with" problem again. It might well be the psychological motivation for getting interested int he subject, but that doesn't at all means it is the sole evidence that can be brought to bear, or the only thing that needs explaining.
Free will is what the feeling of free will seems to be. Since we feel that we could have done otherwise, as when we regret an action, the actual ability to have done otherwise is something to look for when looking for the reality of free will.
When you are trying to find if something exists, you are looking for something that has all the characteristics it is supposed to have, and that is one of the characteristics it is supposed to have.
ETA Bu that is just the beginning. A decision that could have been otherwise has potentially far greater importance than a "decision" that was inevitable, because it potentially brings about a different future.
Not if it's ours or like ours. Here I'm taking the two stage model as the definition of FW; ordinarily I wouldn't. We feel we have FW because we notice that our intentions cause our actions, and because we aren't aware of any sufficient cause of our intentions, and because we are usually liable to think our minds are much more transparent to ourselves than they actually are. Since we see no cause and think it's transparent we often infer there is no cause.
You are implicitly taking it that "has a cause" means "no free will". I am taking it "that having an external cause" means no FW. It seems reasonable that FW means causing one's own actions, so it is not exclusive of all forms of causality.
When I wrote "we aren't aware of any sufficient cause of our intentions," you should charitably interpret that as "any sufficient external cause." That doesn't change the result. Suppose the two stage model is correct for us. In a universe as like ours as possible but deterministic, human beings would think their actions lacking in any external cause. They would think so for the same reason we think so about ourselves.
In real life, we never experience having to divert a trolley to run over a fat man, either.
Equivalents occur, for instance Churchill's decision to destroy the French fleet to prevent it falling into German hands.
These two things are not the same.
Trolley problems are useful as test cases of moral theories in unusual and cleanly-defined situations. They can help confirm or disprove a moral theory which we would then apply in the situations we do encounter in real life.
Experiencing the same circumstances twice, down to the level of large-scale physical determinism, is the only case free-will incompatibilists seem to be concerned with. If we could all agree that "free will doesn't matter because even in a deterministic world we are never in the same situation twice", then there would be no mystery of free will left to solve. Two-stage models are only necessary or useful because they introduce indeterminancy or randomness. If the circumstances never repeat exactly, you don't need randomness or indeterminancy, you just need input-sensitivity.
It is a mistake to think that the exact repetition of circumstances is the only thing that could make CHDO matter. In the absence of FW, all decisions are equally inevitable, and the future happens as it must, so there is no criterion for identifying an important decisions. Given FW, different alternate futures pivot on decisions made at a point in time.