nunnington wrote:Presumably, ughaibu is not referring to a folk psychological view of free will in this thread. I think he has talked about the "reality" of free will, but I can't find a post where he says what he means by that. Granted, we can talk about a folk psychological view of reality, but ughaibu seems to be to referring to something else. Admittedly, this is a long thread, so I may have missed.

ughaibu wrote:a minimal notion of free will sufficient for contract law: the parties have free will if they read and understood the contract and signed it of their own volition and not under threat. [ ] a maximal definition: an agent has free will when they could have done otherwise. If at any time an agent can do A, then at all later times the agent could have done A.

nunnington wrote:Presumably, ughaibu is not referring to a folk psychological view of free will in this thread. I think he has talked about the "reality" of free will, but I can't find a post where he says what he means by that. Granted, we can talk about a folk psychological view of reality, but ughaibu seems to be to referring to something else. Admittedly, this is a long thread, so I may have missed.

ughaibu wrote:
Now let's consider a minimal notion of free will sufficient for contract law: the parties have free will if they read and understood the contract and signed it of their own volition and not under threat. There will be edge cases for which arguments can be made, but these are legal questions and irrelevant here. We can make a contract with a friend to exchange two books, then a week later make another contract to exchange the same books back. It's difficult to see how at least one of these contracts wouldn't satisfy the definition.
Now let's consider a maximal definition: an agent has free will when they could have done otherwise. If at any time an agent can do A, then at all later times the agent could have done A.

ughaibu wrote:6. therefore, if there is free will, the libertarian position is correct.

ughaibu wrote:

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:1. that there are some laws of chemistry and physics which, together with a relevant description of the brain and its environment, mathematically entail all future human behaviour [ ]
If we assume that the first claim is true, then there is a time one at which the description and the laws mathematically entail all the future behaviour of two humans A and B. At time two A says "heads you buy, tails I do" and B agrees, at time three A tosses a coin that lands tails up and at time four A buys the drinks for both of them. This is an everyday situation that I'm sure any reader has been in at some time, so you know this behaviour is unproblematically possible, but more to the point, it is another example of a procedure for recording an observation, so it is required by our ability to do science that we can behave like this. In short, if we have the experimental apparatus, in this case a standard coin, and we have the recording equipment, in this case someone selling drinks and enough money to buy a round, then either science is impossible or we can toss the coin and record the result by one of us buying the drinks.

In the scenario you describe above, the people concerned are using our evolved folk psychology (or Theory of Mind), not science, to predict and control each other.

This is explicitly not the case.
I have assumed that there are laws of chemistry/physics which, given the initial conditions of any universe of interest, exactly entail all the subsequent behaviour of the human beings in that universe of interest. Thus the assertion "heads you buy, tails I do" is entailed by the laws, the action of tossing the coin and its result are entailed by the laws, and the act of buying the drinks is entailed by the laws.
The only other assumption is that science requires that researchers can reliably record their observations.
This means that at time three, when A and B observe that the result of tossing the coin is tails, they know, because their recording procedure has been defined by them as "heads you buy, tails I do", that if they have the ability to do science, then it is logically entailed that at time four A will buy the drinks. As, by assumption, it is also the case that there are laws that mathematically entail that at time four A will buy, they have successfully solved the problem of calculating what is entailed by the laws.

GrahamH wrote:

nunnington wrote:Presumably, ughaibu is not referring to a folk psychological view of free will in this thread. I think he has talked about the "reality" of free will, but I can't find a post where he says what he means by that. Granted, we can talk about a folk psychological view of reality, but ughaibu seems to be to referring to something else. Admittedly, this is a long thread, so I may have missed.

It is sparse.

ughaibu wrote:
Now let's consider a minimal notion of free will sufficient for contract law: the parties have free will if they read and understood the contract and signed it of their own volition and not under threat. There will be edge cases for which arguments can be made, but these are legal questions and irrelevant here. We can make a contract with a friend to exchange two books, then a week later make another contract to exchange the same books back. It's difficult to see how at least one of these contracts wouldn't satisfy the definition.
Now let's consider a maximal definition: an agent has free will when they could have done otherwise. If at any time an agent can do A, then at all later times the agent could have done A.

ughaibu wrote:6. therefore, if there is free will, the libertarian position is correct.

The first (minimal) definition leaves own volition undefined and only considered explicit threats as coercive influences.

The second definition entirely ignores why an agent makes a choice and only seems to touch on physical . logical possibility. i.e. that we have no solid grounds to consider an action impossible. That's bugger all use here.

So it seems to boil down to the agent being unaware of unconscious determinants of actions. If you can't see the strings there are no strings, it's free will. If you can see some strings those are just reasons for your free will choices.
The only occasions you don't have free will are those where you want to do one thing but find yourself coerced to do something else. Then you have free will but not freedom of action.

nunnington wrote:I also wonder how you establish someone's volition, of course you can ask them, a hazardous undertaking, or you can infer it. But I suppose that the psychological aspects are hors de combat for ughaibu.

ughaibu wrote:

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:1. that there are some laws of chemistry and physics which, together with a relevant description of the brain and its environment, mathematically entail all future human behaviour [ ]
If we assume that the first claim is true, then there is a time one at which the description and the laws mathematically entail all the future behaviour of two humans A and B. At time two A says "heads you buy, tails I do" and B agrees, at time three A tosses a coin that lands tails up and at time four A buys the drinks for both of them. This is an everyday situation that I'm sure any reader has been in at some time, so you know this behaviour is unproblematically possible, but more to the point, it is another example of a procedure for recording an observation, so it is required by our ability to do science that we can behave like this. In short, if we have the experimental apparatus, in this case a standard coin, and we have the recording equipment, in this case someone selling drinks and enough money to buy a round, then either science is impossible or we can toss the coin and record the result by one of us buying the drinks.

In the scenario you describe above, the people concerned are using our evolved folk psychology (or Theory of Mind), not science, to predict and control each other.

This is explicitly not the case.
I have assumed that there are laws of chemistry/physics which, given the initial conditions of any universe of interest, exactly entail all the subsequent behaviour of the human beings in that universe of interest. Thus the assertion "heads you buy, tails I do" is entailed by the laws, the action of tossing the coin and its result are entailed by the laws, and the act of buying the drinks is entailed by the laws.
The only other assumption is that science requires that researchers can reliably record their observations.
This means that at time three, when A and B observe that the result of tossing the coin is tails, they know, because their recording procedure has been defined by them as "heads you buy, tails I do", that if they have the ability to do science, then it is logically entailed that at time four A will buy the drinks. As, by assumption, it is also the case that there are laws that mathematically entail that at time four A will buy, they have successfully solved the problem of calculating what is entailed by the laws.

GrahamH wrote:

nunnington wrote:I also wonder how you establish someone's volition, of course you can ask them, a hazardous undertaking, or you can infer it. But I suppose that the psychological aspects are hors de combat for ughaibu.

We can only ask, and people themselves can't account in any complete sense for their own choices. We are really only asking if they noticed coercion or if they had a sense of agency about the action.
It can be demonstrated that both these are unreliable perceptions.

nunnington wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

nunnington wrote:I also wonder how you establish someone's volition, of course you can ask them, a hazardous undertaking, or you can infer it. But I suppose that the psychological aspects are hors de combat for ughaibu.

We can only ask, and people themselves can't account in any complete sense for their own choices. We are really only asking if they noticed coercion or if they had a sense of agency about the action.
It can be demonstrated that both these are unreliable perceptions.

It also seems circular to me, defining free will in terms of "of their own volition". They seem close in meaning to me. In fact, one internet dictionary defines volition as "the faculty or power of using one's will".

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:
This means that at time three, when A and B observe that the result of tossing the coin is tails, they know, because their recording procedure has been defined by them as "heads you buy, tails I do", that if they have the ability to do science, then it is logically entailed that at time four A will buy the drinks. As, by assumption, it is also the case that there are laws that mathematically entail that at time four A will buy, they have successfully solved the problem of calculating what is entailed by the laws.

zoon wrote:Your second assumption (where I've added a blue highlight to your post) depends on folk psychology.

Science is currently practised by humans who have evolved to cooperate in a unique way, which we do not yet fully understand in scientific terms. The results of science are scientific laws, but the practice of science is still folk psychology. Your “logical entailment” (which I’ve highlighted in red in your post) is only “entailed” by the understanding of what words mean, and the implied threat of blame if the researcher/pub customer fails to record correctly/buy a round. All of that is folk psychology, and depends on people having your minimal free will: being uncoerced and of sound mind.

As far as the laws of physics and chemistry go, if the agreement had been to buy the drink if tails, the coin had fallen tails, and the expected payer had promptly collapsed with a stroke, then this sequence of events would have been, in your words, mathematically entailed as a result of scientific laws, with logical entailment getting nowhere. In the end, science trumps folk psychology, even though folk psychology works well most of the time.

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:The only other assumption is that science requires that researchers can reliably record their observations.

Your second assumption (where I've added a blue highlight to your post) depends on folk psychology. Science is currently practised by humans

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:This means that at time three, when A and B observe that the result of tossing the coin is tails, they know, because their recording procedure has been defined by them as "heads you buy, tails I do", that if they have the ability to do science, then it is logically entailed that at time four A will buy the drinks.

As far as the laws of physics and chemistry go, if the agreement had been to buy the drink if tails, the coin had fallen tails, and the expected payer had promptly collapsed with a stroke, then this sequence of events would have been, in your words, mathematically entailed as a result of scientific laws, with logical entailment getting nowhere.

ughaibu wrote:

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:The only other assumption is that science requires that researchers can reliably record their observations.

Your second assumption (where I've added a blue highlight to your post) depends on folk psychology. Science is currently practised by humans

Of course you can reject the principle that science requires that researchers can reliably record their observations, but in that case science would allow mistaken reports. Do you really think that is is acceptable science to report a global annual temperature change of minus x when the observed temperature change was actually x?

ughaibu wrote:And science is a human practice. What do you think it is, that in some day it'll transcend humanity?

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:Do you really think that is is acceptable science to report a global annual temperature change of minus x when the observed temperature change was actually x?

Science doesn’t claim to be infallible. The characteristic procedures of science, such as peer review and repeating experiments, are designed to minimise various sources of error, but even the most basic reporting can go wrong. Science has given us a fantastic understanding of many aspects of the world, partly because of the procedures based on (even more fallible) folk psychology which don’t generally permit false reporting – but the permission here is at the human level, meaning the perpetrator is punished when caught, it’s not a law of physics, let alone logic, that reports are necessarily correct. Even basic scientific understanding can be wrong, as when Newtonian mechanics were shown to be only an approximation to the laws of relativity.

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:And science is a human practice. What do you think it is, that in some day it'll transcend humanity?

I don’t see why human brains shouldn’t eventually be re-engineered, if only to avoid medical problems such as growing old and dying. I would certainly agree that we don’t understand nearly enough about brains to start redesigning them yet.

ughaibu wrote:

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:Do you really think that is is acceptable science to report a global annual temperature change of minus x when the observed temperature change was actually x?

Science doesn’t claim to be infallible. The characteristic procedures of science, such as peer review and repeating experiments, are designed to minimise various sources of error, but even the most basic reporting can go wrong. Science has given us a fantastic understanding of many aspects of the world, partly because of the procedures based on (even more fallible) folk psychology which don’t generally permit false reporting – but the permission here is at the human level, meaning the perpetrator is punished when caught, it’s not a law of physics, let alone logic, that reports are necessarily correct. Even basic scientific understanding can be wrong, as when Newtonian mechanics were shown to be only an approximation to the laws of relativity.

I don't see how that in any way addresses my question. Do you or do you not accept that for there to be science, to be precise, empirical science, then it must be possible to both make observations and to accurately record those observations?

ughaibu wrote:

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:And science is a human practice. What do you think it is, that in some day it'll transcend humanity?

I don’t see why human brains shouldn’t eventually be re-engineered, if only to avoid medical problems such as growing old and dying. I would certainly agree that we don’t understand nearly enough about brains to start redesigning them yet.

But they would still be human brains, wouldn't they?

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:The only other assumption is that science requires that researchers can reliably record their observations.

Your second assumption (where I've added a blue highlight to your post) depends on folk psychology. Science is currently practised by humans

Of course you can reject the principle that science requires that researchers can reliably record their observations, but in that case science would allow mistaken reports. Do you really think that is is acceptable science to report a global annual temperature change of minus x when the observed temperature change was actually x?

Science doesn’t claim to be infallible. The characteristic procedures of science, such as peer review and repeating experiments, are designed to minimise various sources of error, but even the most basic reporting can go wrong.

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:Do you or do you not accept that for there to be science, to be precise, empirical science, then it must be possible to both make observations and to accurately record those observations?

Empirical recordings are unlikely to be perfectly accurate, estimating the level of error is very often an aspect of experiments. Human mistakes and fraud are other sources of error. We need a reasonable level of accuracy in our responses to be able to cope with life in general, science isn't special in that respect.

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:But they would still be human brains, wouldn't they?

That would depend on what you define as human.

GrahamH wrote:

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:

zoon wrote:Your second assumption (where I've added a blue highlight to your post) depends on folk psychology. Science is currently practised by humans

Of course you can reject the principle that science requires that researchers can reliably record their observations, but in that case science would allow mistaken reports. Do you really think that is is acceptable science to report a global annual temperature change of minus x when the observed temperature change was actually x?

Science doesn’t claim to be infallible. The characteristic procedures of science, such as peer review and repeating experiments, are designed to minimise various sources of error, but even the most basic reporting can go wrong.

I don't think ughaibu is saying science requires perfect zero-error recording of results. He has some as yet unexplained notion that free will is required to e able to do it at all. I think you can ignore this point unless he justifies it and he has evaded numerous requests for him to do that so don't expect much.
It looks like the same confusion that he assumes under hard determinism that human behaviour is predestined but not tied to the experimental results. (see also coins and dice). If thet were the case (and there is no reason to think it would be the case) then observers would be acting like zombies instead of having thier actions determined by the experimental results, which is what works for science.


Odd isn't it?

zoon wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

zoon wrote:

ughaibu wrote:Of course you can reject the principle that science requires that researchers can reliably record their observations, but in that case science would allow mistaken reports. Do you really think that is is acceptable science to report a global annual temperature change of minus x when the observed temperature change was actually x?

Science doesn’t claim to be infallible. The characteristic procedures of science, such as peer review and repeating experiments, are designed to minimise various sources of error, but even the most basic reporting can go wrong.

I don't think ughaibu is saying science requires perfect zero-error recording of results. He has some as yet unexplained notion that free will is required to e able to do it at all. I think you can ignore this point unless he justifies it and he has evaded numerous requests for him to do that so don't expect much.
It looks like the same confusion that he assumes under hard determinism that human behaviour is predestined but not tied to the experimental results. (see also coins and dice). If thet were the case (and there is no reason to think it would be the case) then observers would be acting like zombies instead of having thier actions determined by the experimental results, which is what works for science.


Odd isn't it?

Yes, I think you are right, I was missing the point, ughaibu is talking about one individual reporting to another. Science is currently a matter of cooperation between human individuals using our various evolved methods of cooperation. In my view, it's fair to say that science as it's currently practised does indeed take the free will of the researchers for granted, they are taken to be of sound mind and not acting under coercion.

GrahamH wrote:That is a weak compatibilist definition of free will.

Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are mutually compatible and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent.[1] Compatibilists believe freedom can be present or absent in situations for reasons that have nothing to do with metaphysics.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

taken to be of sound mind and not acting under coercion

ughaibu wrote:compatibilists and incompatibilists disagree about whether or not there could be free will in a determined world. Obviously, shit-spittingly obviously, they can only disagree if they are talking about the same notion of free wil

The term “free will” has emerged over the past two millennia as the canonical designator for a significant kind of control over one’s actions. Questions concerning the nature and existence of this kind of control (e.g., does it require and do we have the freedom to do otherwise or the power of self-determination?), and what its true significance is (is it necessary for moral responsibility or human dignity?) have been taken up in every period of Western philosophy and by many of the most important philosophical figures https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/

Different compatibilists offer very different definitions of what "free will" even means and consequently find different types of constraints to be relevant to the issue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will