An old joke involves photographing two books together: “Everything They Teach You At Harvard Law School,” alongside “Everything They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Law School.” The absurd implication of the infinite wealth of knowledge that ought be contained in these 600 pages or so is an indictment of that thing which publishers love:
There is a nuance that I think is important to discussions about free will, and this applies to Shapiro just as well as Saplosky: are we talking about fundamental free will (as per the fundamental rules of reality), or effective free will (something that's good enough in every practical sense).
I agree with Alex that there is no fundamental free will, in that regardless of whether you believe in a deterministic reality or a probabilistic one, there is simply a contradiction in terms between free (indicating something undetermined, unconstrained) and will (implying a level of control from the agent). If it's free, it's not will, and if it's will, it's not free. This would kinda require the agent to be external to nature to be both unconstrained and willful, and that's where we could plug God in to fill the gap.
But then Shapiro replies with "society does require an extraordinary number of people to believe that they are capable of making decisions". That's fine, there is really no contradiction here. We are able to make decisions. Those decisions are not free in the most metaphysical sense, but why would we want them to be? We are making decisions precisely to respond to the world around us.
It also doesn't matter that those decisions are determined by the world around us, and even that I am determined by the world around me, because that simply is what we are. All those determined causal chains still produce human beings that are conscious and (often) intelligent, and there simply is no alternative ideal ME that could exist independently of that. So inasfar as it makes sense at all to call myself a person, that person is one that is able to make decisions. In other words, the statements "I exist" and "I can choose" require the exact same assumptions. We do have effective free will.
The reason Ben thinks talking about "a series of chemical firings" is a good counterargument is that, I suspect, he has little scientific culture. One of the core ideas of physics is that complexity can emerge from simplicity through scale. A lot of simple chemical reactions can amount to something really complex and not reducible to the details of those reactions. Those two levels of description don't mesh.
By the way, I also think Saplosky is wrong when he says that since there is no fundamental free will, there cannot be any notion of responsibility. At the level of the fundamental, there isn't even a WE that could be responsible for anything. Choice, and responsibility, are notions that only exist at the level of an individual, so inasfar as the word responsibility even makes sense, we may have it. What we do with it is another matter entirely.
Now I realise I also misspoke about Saplosky's position. He doesn't talk about fundamental free will, he talks about how our effective will is determined by our environment and biology and history etc, so he considers it isn't free. I still disagree for a similar reason that I gave: that is simply true for every human being on Earth, so this cannot be compared to an unconditioned person who can have responsibility. This is the only version of people that exists, and it goes with a version of responsibility that is consistent with that. People can be responsible as people, and understanding the causation for their decisions does not disconnect those decisions from the person who made them.
That doesn't mean that knowledge about those factors is useless, and I do agree that they should factor in the way that we judge responsibility, because they can tell us what is likely to help someone make better decisions, or whether they are likely to be able to at all.
Thank you, great point. I think a lot of these heated debates are around not agreeing on semantics. WHAT free will are we talking about? Fundamental or Effective? "Fundamental free will" may not exist, but in my opinion the concept is "anthropomorphizing" a theoretical definition that instantly makes real humans reject any claims that this might not exist.
Because for a typical person, "free will" is always used in the sense of "effective free will", and claiming that it does not exist intuitivly makes no sense and is also highly offensive for individuals valuing their autonomy.
I think it’s worth mentioning that inserting God as a solution to the problem of free will is not as adequate as it’s being made out to be. Take for instance the verse in which Jesus predicts that Peter will betray him 3 times before the rooster crows. Jesus is said to be God, meaning he cannot be wrong. How exactly does Peter have free will? If he chooses to not betray Jesus that would make Jesus wrong and thus not omniscient. If Peter does betray Jesus that would mean his decision was already made up before he even realized what the decision was, thus relinquishing his free will. The theist may make the move of open theism but this brings along its own issues as well.
Well Ben is Jewish, and so doesn't believe in the specific example you provided, as he does not believe in the historicity of Christ's divinity to predict such a thing. But you're right that many Christians who believe in free will have a problem with Jesus' precognition that Peter would deny him or that Judith would betray him. However, they would most likely respond that the reason that Jesus knew that these things would happen was not because he will them to be that way, it's just that you could see the future and knew that Peter and Judas would make these decisions of their own free will. Not a perfect rebuttal, but that is how they would respond nonetheless.
I think Shapiro (Ben?) addresses this point in his repeated appeal to "I don't know how God does it, but I have faith he does [grant free will]". I do find the particular example you stated to be troublesome; Jesus telling Peter his fate is almost like observing a superposition --- the wave function collapses and only one possible state remains.
I do agree that Ben may respond in that way, but it’s nonetheless inadequate. Shapiro replying with the typically “God works in mysterious ways” is at best god of the gaps and certainly shouldn’t be taken seriously on a debate stage. It also does nothing to address the other issues of theistic free will. How do we explain for instance the fact that God seemingly created my brain exactly the way it is, knowing a neuron would fire an action potential into my synapse subsequently causing me to act the way I do. Where’s the free will in that? At what point do I control this process, especially considering the current research suggests that we aren’t even aware of this process happening.
Yup, the objection you're bringing up here is the seeming incompatibility of free will and divine sovereignty. Someone like William Lane Craig would respond to this by bringing up Molinism. The idea that before God created the world, he had knowledge of all necessary truths and counterfactuals. Counterfactuals are just conditional statements in the subjective mood that don't necessarily map to reality. For example, if I were a billionaire I would buy a skyscraper. It's not true that I'm a billionaire, but if that were the case then the statement would follow.
So the way William Lane Craig tries to get around it is by saying something to the effect of, out of all the possible worlds God could have created, he knew in which world free creatures would allow his will to come to pass and that is the world he actualized. Or more succinctly, God chooses what it is that YOU FREELY choose. But of course, this makes it clear that Craig has a libertarian definition of free will. So to tie it back to rooster crowing, God knew before creating the world that if Peter were to be in a specific circumstance he would freely choose to betray him. And God actualized said world.
I do like Alvin Plantigas observation that defining free will to be the ability to have acted differently is actually talking about maximal autonomy. Then it seems to follow, as finite limited beings, why would we expect to have maximal autonomy, instead of a hyper-limited one? I understand the appeal of what Sam Harris presents as needing to know every factor in the universe that influenced a decision and be able to control it in order to say you chose it. And I'd say ye it would totally follow if we accept materialism. It would be a rather trivial way of saying, well we only see thing A bump into thing B, and I'm a thing made out of atoms, so I must be at the whim of however the universe wants to bump into me.
However, there are many arguments that I believe argue very successfully against materialism. Understanding how something that is not part of a physical causal chain, can seem to appear to have physical causal power, leads to the natural question of, if that thing is not physically determined by you or anything else since afterall its physically uncaused, how the heck can you say it was you that caused said action. It seems to be similar asking how can an abstract object like the number 2 have any physical causal power over physical objects. If it can I have reasoned through it yet, but although abstract objects don't have physical causal power, I do see how they can have explanatory power.
By the way, Four sided triangles exist! They were discovered by mathematician BF Sherman in 1993 described in the paper ""Sherman's Fourth Side of a Triangle." Your recent community post (awesome btw) was about the 6th time I've heard you bring it up as an obvious 'contradiction.' Usually brought up in a context of, "Like come on man, OF COURSE there isn't a four-sided triangle." The sentiment of which I totally understand.
I'm also aware of linguistic imprecision for the sake of clarity and quick communication. So although, I disagree that a four-sided triangle does not exist. Funnily enough, I may also disagree with the statement that a four-sided 2d convex polygon with three vertices and three sides does not exist. Afterall this statement relies on the intuition that 4 sides cannot be the same as 3 sides. A statement that is in part, deemed true due to its correspondence to the real world. But just as we're able to forgo the need for correspondence to reality when it comes to the truth of the square root of -1 and rely on its consistency with a mathematical framework. Why don't we also forgo the need for correspondence to our physical reality when it comes to the potential truth of 4 equaling 3 in some other mathematical framework.
All this to say that our definitions can be limited. Sherman’s triangle has four vertices, which challenges the idea that a triangle must have only three. Just like how 11 in base_3 refers to the same quantity as 4 in base_10, the concept of a four-sided triangle depends on how you define terms and your perspective. Geometry, like number systems, can expand beyond traditional limits, showing that impossibility is often just a matter of perspective.
Just for fun, what about another one of your favorites: a married bachelor. Imagine the man whose spouse just died, and his spouse's death hasn't been reported to the authorities. Legally speaking he is married, the documentation shows that this is the case and has not been voided. And yet immediately upon his spouse's death, there is a sense in which he is unmarried, afterall "until death do we part." What you deem as impossible is purely due to how precise your language is and your perspective. If you acknowledge you'll never get an entirely precise description of reality let alone abstract reality such as is the case with math, language, and potentially consciousness, well then you've conceded that labeling absolute impossibilities becomes absurd.
I don't see how any labeling of impossibility is at its core any different than labeling physical impossibilities. (very much in part to the fact that I am an empiricist). Similar to how prior to Edmund Hillary's successful summit of Mount Everest in 1953, many deemed scaling mount Everest impossible. Well that's because they defined scaling as climbing above 8,000 meters with a lack of reliable oxygen systems, inadequate clothing and limited knowledge of the terrain. We can sort of find this example amusing since it's very clear what we really mean by impossible is something like saying, "given the knowledge, perspective and imprecise definitions I have now, I don't see how this can be the case."
This has huge implications when speaking about potential impossibilities attributed to God and the true impossibility of free will.
Alex if you see this and this is at all helpful to you. Love you man. You inspired me to start my own channel to share my synthesis of what I find to be consistent philosophical ideas and create a space where these ideas can be rigorously tested and refined into something more resilient and valuable. I hope to eventually grow my channel big enough so that it eventually becomes more worth your time to have a chat. To me you definitely seem to be the type that holds most of his beliefs as assumptions, and is not scared to update a previous idea for a better one. I'm not sure if you share this fear of mine, but I fear the future in which I eventually become so echo-chambered into believing all my beliefs are finally absolutely true. So much more I would add here, but man this has been long enough. Thank you for your time and interest!
I see your comment and I raise you: four-sided triangles don't exist because even three-sided triangles don't exist!
Ok, they kinda exist, but it depends what we mean by "exist". Mathematical objects are quite different from physical objects, they are abstractions that we consider meaningful as long as they don't lead to any contradiction within themselves or with the rest of mathematics. The only criterion is consistency. It turns out that some of these abstractions end up being useful in real life, like the circle being a pretty nice shape for a lot of things, or algebra being incredibly efficient as a language for physics. But that's far from being the general case, there's plenty of (relatively modern) math fields that are so removed from concrete reality that they probably will never have any application.
But then the thing is that unless you're a platonist, those abstractions do not actually exist outside of our minds. There is no such thing as a circle, merely some objects whose contours are close enough to a circle. There is no such thing as the number 4, merely groups of objects that can be counted up to 4. We invented those things to be able to count or describe objects, and the real question is: how come it's so effective and consistent?
So a three-sided triangle is a useful abstraction, and a four-sided triangle is a useless abstraction, and that's the only difference. You could say: but I can picture a three-sided triangle, and not a four-sided one, so the former exists more. However, what you picture is either a combination of images of triangular shapes you've seen (so not actual mathematical triangles) or your own interpretation of the abstract properties of the triangle, in which case the picture is secondary to the abstract properties, and the main difference is that the properties of a four-sided triangle lead to immediate contradiction.
I see what you mean, 100% it definitely does matter what we mean by exist. I would 100% agree with you if we were to add the word 'materially' in front of the word exist. It does appear to me to be less naive to believe in the abstract existence of number than it does to believe my sense data is an accurate representation of the world, and that all that can 'exist' is what I can sense with my eyes, ears, nose etc. and exclude the sense of something like the sense of reason, the sense of morality, the sense of being convinced by a proposition etc. Consider the Kalam Cosmological argument, if it is true that the universe has an explanatory cause, than that cause would be timeless, spaceless, immaterial and necessary. And due to its necessary nature, I find it kind of strange to expect as soon as the universe is created it would disappear. So then I think it would be natural to ask the question, is there something I'm vaguely familiar enough that would fit the bill of timeless, spaceless, immaterial thing that is infinite and exists through explanatory causes... well yes something like numbers. For me it's easier to use numbers as an approximation. Totally with you, when we think of the number two, we think, two cars, two pinapples, two something, even the squiggly line with a flat line at the bottom. So what does twoness look like, taste like, sound like, feel like? Well that would be a silly question that presupposes its material nature. It would be closer to say that physical objects instantiate the directly imperceptible nature of something like the number 2. And even closer to say that wherever material objects exist, an abstraction exists as well, everywhere in my field of vision there is twoness threeness the whole plentitude of mathematical relations I am not capable of DIRECTLY sensing. And it forever abstractly exists as this intangible entity that I can only ever get a vague approximation to.
If the Kalam is an uncomfortable way to get to immaterialism, that's fine. I think it would be sufficient to just acknowledge the naiveness of direct realism tho. That what I perceive with my senses is all that there truly is. Afterall, when a pencil is dipped in water and appears to be bent, wouldn't it be strange to say that the pencil is in fact bent. That believing in its wholeness is an abstraction that only exists in the mind? Or would it be closer to say, that you're limited in your perspective? That you don't believe in non-contradiction because that goes directly against what you perceive in the physical world? A cup both not existing and existing physically, makes your brain go brrrr?
I don't believe that what I perceive with my senses is all that there truly is. My senses are pretty bad at sensing time dilation or quantum superpositions. I do believe, however, that there are good and bad ways to investigate what does exist (and plenty of relatively ok ways in between). Intuition, for instance, is a good way as long as it applies to things that we have trained our intuition on: the immediate material world around us, human psychology at a moderate scale... When we try to apply it to questions far beyond that, it breaks down.
The image of the pen in water is an interesting one. Relying on my sense of vision to describe it and saying that it is bent requires me to know nothing about the properties of light and its interaction with different materials, and also to ignore what I know about the limitations of my biological eyes. Some people might have been impressed by it thousands of years ago, but then we investigated and figured it out, using our senses. What we didn't do is to rely on the a priori existence of an unchanging concept of pen-ness which guarantees it won't bend. When I see a pen in water, I can 100% rely on my sense of vision, which tells me that the photons that hit that pen went from water to air and then entered my eye (first passing through my glasses because I'm blind as a banana), hit my retina, which made a few neurons fire, and activated some bits of my brain. How this relates to actual reality is not an obvious question but we trust it because we've tested it.
TL;DR: if it can't be tested, it can't be trusted.
“I’m not saying that it does exist—maybe it doesn’t. […] Maybe you’re totally right and all of this is just a series of chemical firings—that’s quite plausible. That’s fine."
and
“Well, I think it does exist, and you’re delusional to think it doesn’t.”
I wanted to put these side by side to contrast. I do not think the nuances/difficulties of free will can be tackled in a conversation where the above contradiction unrelsoved.
https://youtu.be/nh1Z3UTobrY?si=4ImuAWg-EhhUtIGW please respond to this guys video. I’m either going crazy or this guy with a Cambridge phd has painfully not understood the no freewill argument.
You were so close to a KO in this debate. I'll settle for the TKO.
The go to counter with theist has to be, "Please explain to me the exact methodology you are using to selectively read and apply your Holy texts to get to your objective morality". Make them give a real answer, and don't let up until they do. The only answer they have is "I feel....." and that is subjective. Point, set, match every time.
That might not be the ultimate defeater you think it is. Well Ig in other sense it’s too good of a defeater that it defeats your own position. Suppose I ask you the question, Why do you believe morality isn’t objective? Then you’d go into great detail about how we’ve only ever observed morality as a consequence and in relation to conscious creatures susceptible to preferences and opinion, well how do you know you can trust your sense data? How do you know that is the truth of the matter? Well because you became convinced of it, that feeling where you stop your inquiry and call it good enough, that’s the feeling of being convinced. What you’re convinced by has probably changed numerous times throughout your life. And looking back you’ve probably switched between mutually exclusive beliefs. So to say the core of what they find convincing is emotion, well ye. That’s the case with everyone.
In order for emotions to be detached from your ‘decision making,’ look into patients who’ve had their ventromedial cortex removed as described by one of Albert Ellis’s patients. And very quickly you’ll probably come to realize it’s utility.
Utility is subjective, because we must subjectively choose a metric by which to measure it. The point is, relgionist don't have an objective metric or method for cherry picking their holy books. That is why there are a 1000+ flavors of Jesus alone.
Yup, totally with you on that. It would've best for me to say 'practicality.' (which I admit is also subjective) Utility is most definitely subjective in the sense that it is always in relation to a goal that is chosen subjectively. That is not to say, once we agree upon a goal there aren't objectively more effective ways to go about achieving it. Ultimately I believe any goals we're striving to achieve are subjective in nature. I would be interested in seeing what you believe to be an absolute objective measure through which to measure anything. Even in science we presuppose specific subjective goals and values in order to have a "productive" conversation. We value consistency, non-contradiction, coherence, predictive power, and simplicity to name a few. Variety is not a knock on potential underlying scientific objectivity, afterall before it was tested there were many competing theories for the atom, doesn't mean there was more refining to do from there.
I'm not even sure what the definition of Free Will is supposed to be. It seems to me that it's simply, "Your decisions aren't random. Nor are they determined. It's something else that I have no idea about. But it works in such a way that I can blame you for things."
I have an interesting objection to the ontological argument that at least demonstrates the disconnect of consciousness to reality and our inability to simply think and will something into being. Say, I requested for you too imagine an omnipotent fictional character. We are going to grant this fictional character total omnipotence, meaning that, by definition, he is capable of doing literally anything (not just anything that is logically possible). We can do this because we are the ones creating the character and we get to decide its abilities. Now, give this fictional character an appearance that is recognizable to you, maybe your favorite fictional character or an OC that you have. Now, since this character is omnipotent and by definition can do literally anything, it can by definition supersede the laws of its fictional reality. So when I count to three, imagine this fictional character appearing directly behind you. Since he is omnipotent without any logical constraints, he should be able do this for you. Ready? Three. Two. One. Look behind you. Is there a fictional character behind you? Of course not. I love this thought experiment because it at least shows that our conscious experience and the world around us may not be as directly connected as we want them to be.
I like what you did here, but here are a couple points: Being CAPABLE of doing everything doesn't mean it DOES everything. If you're the one that's deciding its abilities and what it will do, you're obviously more powerful than the being you're imagining, you're not imagining an omnipotent being. I fail to see how its aesthetic, or what it chooses to do or not to do, increases it's CAPACITY to do all logical or physical actions.
The beauty of this argument is that we are the ones creating the fictional character and thus we can change him ad hoc to suit our needs. If you don't buy the omnipotent fictional character because you think our dominance over the character means he's not truly omnipotent, that's fair. Instead, I could just ask you to change the qualities of the character a little bit. Instead of making him all powerful, let's just grant this fictional character by definition the ability to actually travel within our real reality. This is the only superpower we're giving him. He is still under our control no matter what, meaning by definition that he will do as we say, he has no choice in the matter. Even if you try this, you still cannot will the being into being. It should have capacity to do this because we are literally giving it that quality. It's a fictional character and so it can do whatever we want it to and have whatever qualities we want to ascribe it. If I say that I wanted to transcend it's on reality into our own, it should be able to do that because I am the one in control. This demonstrates the disconnect from our conscious experience and the real world. It's similar to how we can conceive of an infinite amount of data points between the numbers of 0 and 1 because of the infinite amount of decimal places. But in reality, there isn't actually an infinite amount of distance between two numbers because an actual infinite is impossible (if you're crossing between two points, you are covering a finite distance). All of this to say consciousness cannot always accurately depict or influence reality.
Right, yes, totally with you, yet it follows again. From my perspective it’s clear that you’re inability to define into being a fictional character that can appear behind me is due to YOUR limitations, not the character’s. If you’re the one ascribing all of it’s properties and how it will function, its lack of physical actualization says a lot about your limitations, not the character’s. You’ve just managed to show that with your understanding, equipment and genetic makeup you can’t will such a being into existence. Just because I’m not of the genetic makeup, stature or skill-level to be part of the NBA will I dismiss its possibility altogether.
Right even if I grant that it’s in principle impossible to will an abstract objects physical instantiation in the real world. Is not the same thing as saying that, there’s a disconnect between, “our conscious experience and the real world.” After all, I could prod your brain in such a way that you see a different color or move your arm, or believe something entirely different. A clear indication that the conscious world and the physical world may not be that disconnected.
There is a nuance that I think is important to discussions about free will, and this applies to Shapiro just as well as Saplosky: are we talking about fundamental free will (as per the fundamental rules of reality), or effective free will (something that's good enough in every practical sense).
I agree with Alex that there is no fundamental free will, in that regardless of whether you believe in a deterministic reality or a probabilistic one, there is simply a contradiction in terms between free (indicating something undetermined, unconstrained) and will (implying a level of control from the agent). If it's free, it's not will, and if it's will, it's not free. This would kinda require the agent to be external to nature to be both unconstrained and willful, and that's where we could plug God in to fill the gap.
But then Shapiro replies with "society does require an extraordinary number of people to believe that they are capable of making decisions". That's fine, there is really no contradiction here. We are able to make decisions. Those decisions are not free in the most metaphysical sense, but why would we want them to be? We are making decisions precisely to respond to the world around us.
It also doesn't matter that those decisions are determined by the world around us, and even that I am determined by the world around me, because that simply is what we are. All those determined causal chains still produce human beings that are conscious and (often) intelligent, and there simply is no alternative ideal ME that could exist independently of that. So inasfar as it makes sense at all to call myself a person, that person is one that is able to make decisions. In other words, the statements "I exist" and "I can choose" require the exact same assumptions. We do have effective free will.
The reason Ben thinks talking about "a series of chemical firings" is a good counterargument is that, I suspect, he has little scientific culture. One of the core ideas of physics is that complexity can emerge from simplicity through scale. A lot of simple chemical reactions can amount to something really complex and not reducible to the details of those reactions. Those two levels of description don't mesh.
By the way, I also think Saplosky is wrong when he says that since there is no fundamental free will, there cannot be any notion of responsibility. At the level of the fundamental, there isn't even a WE that could be responsible for anything. Choice, and responsibility, are notions that only exist at the level of an individual, so inasfar as the word responsibility even makes sense, we may have it. What we do with it is another matter entirely.
Actually I shouldn't say Ben has little scientific culture, that's an ad hominem. But if he has some, he's using it wrong.
Now I realise I also misspoke about Saplosky's position. He doesn't talk about fundamental free will, he talks about how our effective will is determined by our environment and biology and history etc, so he considers it isn't free. I still disagree for a similar reason that I gave: that is simply true for every human being on Earth, so this cannot be compared to an unconditioned person who can have responsibility. This is the only version of people that exists, and it goes with a version of responsibility that is consistent with that. People can be responsible as people, and understanding the causation for their decisions does not disconnect those decisions from the person who made them.
That doesn't mean that knowledge about those factors is useless, and I do agree that they should factor in the way that we judge responsibility, because they can tell us what is likely to help someone make better decisions, or whether they are likely to be able to at all.
Thank you, great point. I think a lot of these heated debates are around not agreeing on semantics. WHAT free will are we talking about? Fundamental or Effective? "Fundamental free will" may not exist, but in my opinion the concept is "anthropomorphizing" a theoretical definition that instantly makes real humans reject any claims that this might not exist.
Because for a typical person, "free will" is always used in the sense of "effective free will", and claiming that it does not exist intuitivly makes no sense and is also highly offensive for individuals valuing their autonomy.
I think it’s worth mentioning that inserting God as a solution to the problem of free will is not as adequate as it’s being made out to be. Take for instance the verse in which Jesus predicts that Peter will betray him 3 times before the rooster crows. Jesus is said to be God, meaning he cannot be wrong. How exactly does Peter have free will? If he chooses to not betray Jesus that would make Jesus wrong and thus not omniscient. If Peter does betray Jesus that would mean his decision was already made up before he even realized what the decision was, thus relinquishing his free will. The theist may make the move of open theism but this brings along its own issues as well.
Well Ben is Jewish, and so doesn't believe in the specific example you provided, as he does not believe in the historicity of Christ's divinity to predict such a thing. But you're right that many Christians who believe in free will have a problem with Jesus' precognition that Peter would deny him or that Judith would betray him. However, they would most likely respond that the reason that Jesus knew that these things would happen was not because he will them to be that way, it's just that you could see the future and knew that Peter and Judas would make these decisions of their own free will. Not a perfect rebuttal, but that is how they would respond nonetheless.
*Judas sorry autocorrect
I think Shapiro (Ben?) addresses this point in his repeated appeal to "I don't know how God does it, but I have faith he does [grant free will]". I do find the particular example you stated to be troublesome; Jesus telling Peter his fate is almost like observing a superposition --- the wave function collapses and only one possible state remains.
I do agree that Ben may respond in that way, but it’s nonetheless inadequate. Shapiro replying with the typically “God works in mysterious ways” is at best god of the gaps and certainly shouldn’t be taken seriously on a debate stage. It also does nothing to address the other issues of theistic free will. How do we explain for instance the fact that God seemingly created my brain exactly the way it is, knowing a neuron would fire an action potential into my synapse subsequently causing me to act the way I do. Where’s the free will in that? At what point do I control this process, especially considering the current research suggests that we aren’t even aware of this process happening.
Yup, the objection you're bringing up here is the seeming incompatibility of free will and divine sovereignty. Someone like William Lane Craig would respond to this by bringing up Molinism. The idea that before God created the world, he had knowledge of all necessary truths and counterfactuals. Counterfactuals are just conditional statements in the subjective mood that don't necessarily map to reality. For example, if I were a billionaire I would buy a skyscraper. It's not true that I'm a billionaire, but if that were the case then the statement would follow.
So the way William Lane Craig tries to get around it is by saying something to the effect of, out of all the possible worlds God could have created, he knew in which world free creatures would allow his will to come to pass and that is the world he actualized. Or more succinctly, God chooses what it is that YOU FREELY choose. But of course, this makes it clear that Craig has a libertarian definition of free will. So to tie it back to rooster crowing, God knew before creating the world that if Peter were to be in a specific circumstance he would freely choose to betray him. And God actualized said world.
I do like Alvin Plantigas observation that defining free will to be the ability to have acted differently is actually talking about maximal autonomy. Then it seems to follow, as finite limited beings, why would we expect to have maximal autonomy, instead of a hyper-limited one? I understand the appeal of what Sam Harris presents as needing to know every factor in the universe that influenced a decision and be able to control it in order to say you chose it. And I'd say ye it would totally follow if we accept materialism. It would be a rather trivial way of saying, well we only see thing A bump into thing B, and I'm a thing made out of atoms, so I must be at the whim of however the universe wants to bump into me.
However, there are many arguments that I believe argue very successfully against materialism. Understanding how something that is not part of a physical causal chain, can seem to appear to have physical causal power, leads to the natural question of, if that thing is not physically determined by you or anything else since afterall its physically uncaused, how the heck can you say it was you that caused said action. It seems to be similar asking how can an abstract object like the number 2 have any physical causal power over physical objects. If it can I have reasoned through it yet, but although abstract objects don't have physical causal power, I do see how they can have explanatory power.
By the way, Four sided triangles exist! They were discovered by mathematician BF Sherman in 1993 described in the paper ""Sherman's Fourth Side of a Triangle." Your recent community post (awesome btw) was about the 6th time I've heard you bring it up as an obvious 'contradiction.' Usually brought up in a context of, "Like come on man, OF COURSE there isn't a four-sided triangle." The sentiment of which I totally understand.
I'm also aware of linguistic imprecision for the sake of clarity and quick communication. So although, I disagree that a four-sided triangle does not exist. Funnily enough, I may also disagree with the statement that a four-sided 2d convex polygon with three vertices and three sides does not exist. Afterall this statement relies on the intuition that 4 sides cannot be the same as 3 sides. A statement that is in part, deemed true due to its correspondence to the real world. But just as we're able to forgo the need for correspondence to reality when it comes to the truth of the square root of -1 and rely on its consistency with a mathematical framework. Why don't we also forgo the need for correspondence to our physical reality when it comes to the potential truth of 4 equaling 3 in some other mathematical framework.
All this to say that our definitions can be limited. Sherman’s triangle has four vertices, which challenges the idea that a triangle must have only three. Just like how 11 in base_3 refers to the same quantity as 4 in base_10, the concept of a four-sided triangle depends on how you define terms and your perspective. Geometry, like number systems, can expand beyond traditional limits, showing that impossibility is often just a matter of perspective.
Just for fun, what about another one of your favorites: a married bachelor. Imagine the man whose spouse just died, and his spouse's death hasn't been reported to the authorities. Legally speaking he is married, the documentation shows that this is the case and has not been voided. And yet immediately upon his spouse's death, there is a sense in which he is unmarried, afterall "until death do we part." What you deem as impossible is purely due to how precise your language is and your perspective. If you acknowledge you'll never get an entirely precise description of reality let alone abstract reality such as is the case with math, language, and potentially consciousness, well then you've conceded that labeling absolute impossibilities becomes absurd.
I don't see how any labeling of impossibility is at its core any different than labeling physical impossibilities. (very much in part to the fact that I am an empiricist). Similar to how prior to Edmund Hillary's successful summit of Mount Everest in 1953, many deemed scaling mount Everest impossible. Well that's because they defined scaling as climbing above 8,000 meters with a lack of reliable oxygen systems, inadequate clothing and limited knowledge of the terrain. We can sort of find this example amusing since it's very clear what we really mean by impossible is something like saying, "given the knowledge, perspective and imprecise definitions I have now, I don't see how this can be the case."
This has huge implications when speaking about potential impossibilities attributed to God and the true impossibility of free will.
Alex if you see this and this is at all helpful to you. Love you man. You inspired me to start my own channel to share my synthesis of what I find to be consistent philosophical ideas and create a space where these ideas can be rigorously tested and refined into something more resilient and valuable. I hope to eventually grow my channel big enough so that it eventually becomes more worth your time to have a chat. To me you definitely seem to be the type that holds most of his beliefs as assumptions, and is not scared to update a previous idea for a better one. I'm not sure if you share this fear of mine, but I fear the future in which I eventually become so echo-chambered into believing all my beliefs are finally absolutely true. So much more I would add here, but man this has been long enough. Thank you for your time and interest!
I see your comment and I raise you: four-sided triangles don't exist because even three-sided triangles don't exist!
Ok, they kinda exist, but it depends what we mean by "exist". Mathematical objects are quite different from physical objects, they are abstractions that we consider meaningful as long as they don't lead to any contradiction within themselves or with the rest of mathematics. The only criterion is consistency. It turns out that some of these abstractions end up being useful in real life, like the circle being a pretty nice shape for a lot of things, or algebra being incredibly efficient as a language for physics. But that's far from being the general case, there's plenty of (relatively modern) math fields that are so removed from concrete reality that they probably will never have any application.
But then the thing is that unless you're a platonist, those abstractions do not actually exist outside of our minds. There is no such thing as a circle, merely some objects whose contours are close enough to a circle. There is no such thing as the number 4, merely groups of objects that can be counted up to 4. We invented those things to be able to count or describe objects, and the real question is: how come it's so effective and consistent?
So a three-sided triangle is a useful abstraction, and a four-sided triangle is a useless abstraction, and that's the only difference. You could say: but I can picture a three-sided triangle, and not a four-sided one, so the former exists more. However, what you picture is either a combination of images of triangular shapes you've seen (so not actual mathematical triangles) or your own interpretation of the abstract properties of the triangle, in which case the picture is secondary to the abstract properties, and the main difference is that the properties of a four-sided triangle lead to immediate contradiction.
I see what you mean, 100% it definitely does matter what we mean by exist. I would 100% agree with you if we were to add the word 'materially' in front of the word exist. It does appear to me to be less naive to believe in the abstract existence of number than it does to believe my sense data is an accurate representation of the world, and that all that can 'exist' is what I can sense with my eyes, ears, nose etc. and exclude the sense of something like the sense of reason, the sense of morality, the sense of being convinced by a proposition etc. Consider the Kalam Cosmological argument, if it is true that the universe has an explanatory cause, than that cause would be timeless, spaceless, immaterial and necessary. And due to its necessary nature, I find it kind of strange to expect as soon as the universe is created it would disappear. So then I think it would be natural to ask the question, is there something I'm vaguely familiar enough that would fit the bill of timeless, spaceless, immaterial thing that is infinite and exists through explanatory causes... well yes something like numbers. For me it's easier to use numbers as an approximation. Totally with you, when we think of the number two, we think, two cars, two pinapples, two something, even the squiggly line with a flat line at the bottom. So what does twoness look like, taste like, sound like, feel like? Well that would be a silly question that presupposes its material nature. It would be closer to say that physical objects instantiate the directly imperceptible nature of something like the number 2. And even closer to say that wherever material objects exist, an abstraction exists as well, everywhere in my field of vision there is twoness threeness the whole plentitude of mathematical relations I am not capable of DIRECTLY sensing. And it forever abstractly exists as this intangible entity that I can only ever get a vague approximation to.
If the Kalam is an uncomfortable way to get to immaterialism, that's fine. I think it would be sufficient to just acknowledge the naiveness of direct realism tho. That what I perceive with my senses is all that there truly is. Afterall, when a pencil is dipped in water and appears to be bent, wouldn't it be strange to say that the pencil is in fact bent. That believing in its wholeness is an abstraction that only exists in the mind? Or would it be closer to say, that you're limited in your perspective? That you don't believe in non-contradiction because that goes directly against what you perceive in the physical world? A cup both not existing and existing physically, makes your brain go brrrr?
I don't believe that what I perceive with my senses is all that there truly is. My senses are pretty bad at sensing time dilation or quantum superpositions. I do believe, however, that there are good and bad ways to investigate what does exist (and plenty of relatively ok ways in between). Intuition, for instance, is a good way as long as it applies to things that we have trained our intuition on: the immediate material world around us, human psychology at a moderate scale... When we try to apply it to questions far beyond that, it breaks down.
The image of the pen in water is an interesting one. Relying on my sense of vision to describe it and saying that it is bent requires me to know nothing about the properties of light and its interaction with different materials, and also to ignore what I know about the limitations of my biological eyes. Some people might have been impressed by it thousands of years ago, but then we investigated and figured it out, using our senses. What we didn't do is to rely on the a priori existence of an unchanging concept of pen-ness which guarantees it won't bend. When I see a pen in water, I can 100% rely on my sense of vision, which tells me that the photons that hit that pen went from water to air and then entered my eye (first passing through my glasses because I'm blind as a banana), hit my retina, which made a few neurons fire, and activated some bits of my brain. How this relates to actual reality is not an obvious question but we trust it because we've tested it.
TL;DR: if it can't be tested, it can't be trusted.
Perfect, now record yourself reading the essay 😉
“I’m not saying that it does exist—maybe it doesn’t. […] Maybe you’re totally right and all of this is just a series of chemical firings—that’s quite plausible. That’s fine."
and
“Well, I think it does exist, and you’re delusional to think it doesn’t.”
I wanted to put these side by side to contrast. I do not think the nuances/difficulties of free will can be tackled in a conversation where the above contradiction unrelsoved.
• How is free will defined such that it does or does not exist?
• So what whether it exists or not?
• I believe that:
•• Both " God" and FW are fuzzy concepts
•• Whether FW exists or not is independent of whether "God" exists.
•• The longer that questions like this have been debated, the more likely that they are wrong or meaningless ones.
https://youtu.be/nh1Z3UTobrY?si=4ImuAWg-EhhUtIGW please respond to this guys video. I’m either going crazy or this guy with a Cambridge phd has painfully not understood the no freewill argument.
You were so close to a KO in this debate. I'll settle for the TKO.
The go to counter with theist has to be, "Please explain to me the exact methodology you are using to selectively read and apply your Holy texts to get to your objective morality". Make them give a real answer, and don't let up until they do. The only answer they have is "I feel....." and that is subjective. Point, set, match every time.
That might not be the ultimate defeater you think it is. Well Ig in other sense it’s too good of a defeater that it defeats your own position. Suppose I ask you the question, Why do you believe morality isn’t objective? Then you’d go into great detail about how we’ve only ever observed morality as a consequence and in relation to conscious creatures susceptible to preferences and opinion, well how do you know you can trust your sense data? How do you know that is the truth of the matter? Well because you became convinced of it, that feeling where you stop your inquiry and call it good enough, that’s the feeling of being convinced. What you’re convinced by has probably changed numerous times throughout your life. And looking back you’ve probably switched between mutually exclusive beliefs. So to say the core of what they find convincing is emotion, well ye. That’s the case with everyone.
In order for emotions to be detached from your ‘decision making,’ look into patients who’ve had their ventromedial cortex removed as described by one of Albert Ellis’s patients. And very quickly you’ll probably come to realize it’s utility.
Utility is subjective, because we must subjectively choose a metric by which to measure it. The point is, relgionist don't have an objective metric or method for cherry picking their holy books. That is why there are a 1000+ flavors of Jesus alone.
Yup, totally with you on that. It would've best for me to say 'practicality.' (which I admit is also subjective) Utility is most definitely subjective in the sense that it is always in relation to a goal that is chosen subjectively. That is not to say, once we agree upon a goal there aren't objectively more effective ways to go about achieving it. Ultimately I believe any goals we're striving to achieve are subjective in nature. I would be interested in seeing what you believe to be an absolute objective measure through which to measure anything. Even in science we presuppose specific subjective goals and values in order to have a "productive" conversation. We value consistency, non-contradiction, coherence, predictive power, and simplicity to name a few. Variety is not a knock on potential underlying scientific objectivity, afterall before it was tested there were many competing theories for the atom, doesn't mean there was more refining to do from there.
I'm not even sure what the definition of Free Will is supposed to be. It seems to me that it's simply, "Your decisions aren't random. Nor are they determined. It's something else that I have no idea about. But it works in such a way that I can blame you for things."
Apparently my comment is too long to fit. Please see my post at https://open.substack.com/pub/rcallist/p/can-free-will-exist?r=4bkfn2&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true for a counterargument to Alex's assertion that free will cannot exist under any circumstance. Curious to hear Alex's response.
I have an interesting objection to the ontological argument that at least demonstrates the disconnect of consciousness to reality and our inability to simply think and will something into being. Say, I requested for you too imagine an omnipotent fictional character. We are going to grant this fictional character total omnipotence, meaning that, by definition, he is capable of doing literally anything (not just anything that is logically possible). We can do this because we are the ones creating the character and we get to decide its abilities. Now, give this fictional character an appearance that is recognizable to you, maybe your favorite fictional character or an OC that you have. Now, since this character is omnipotent and by definition can do literally anything, it can by definition supersede the laws of its fictional reality. So when I count to three, imagine this fictional character appearing directly behind you. Since he is omnipotent without any logical constraints, he should be able do this for you. Ready? Three. Two. One. Look behind you. Is there a fictional character behind you? Of course not. I love this thought experiment because it at least shows that our conscious experience and the world around us may not be as directly connected as we want them to be.
I like what you did here, but here are a couple points: Being CAPABLE of doing everything doesn't mean it DOES everything. If you're the one that's deciding its abilities and what it will do, you're obviously more powerful than the being you're imagining, you're not imagining an omnipotent being. I fail to see how its aesthetic, or what it chooses to do or not to do, increases it's CAPACITY to do all logical or physical actions.
The beauty of this argument is that we are the ones creating the fictional character and thus we can change him ad hoc to suit our needs. If you don't buy the omnipotent fictional character because you think our dominance over the character means he's not truly omnipotent, that's fair. Instead, I could just ask you to change the qualities of the character a little bit. Instead of making him all powerful, let's just grant this fictional character by definition the ability to actually travel within our real reality. This is the only superpower we're giving him. He is still under our control no matter what, meaning by definition that he will do as we say, he has no choice in the matter. Even if you try this, you still cannot will the being into being. It should have capacity to do this because we are literally giving it that quality. It's a fictional character and so it can do whatever we want it to and have whatever qualities we want to ascribe it. If I say that I wanted to transcend it's on reality into our own, it should be able to do that because I am the one in control. This demonstrates the disconnect from our conscious experience and the real world. It's similar to how we can conceive of an infinite amount of data points between the numbers of 0 and 1 because of the infinite amount of decimal places. But in reality, there isn't actually an infinite amount of distance between two numbers because an actual infinite is impossible (if you're crossing between two points, you are covering a finite distance). All of this to say consciousness cannot always accurately depict or influence reality.
Right, yes, totally with you, yet it follows again. From my perspective it’s clear that you’re inability to define into being a fictional character that can appear behind me is due to YOUR limitations, not the character’s. If you’re the one ascribing all of it’s properties and how it will function, its lack of physical actualization says a lot about your limitations, not the character’s. You’ve just managed to show that with your understanding, equipment and genetic makeup you can’t will such a being into existence. Just because I’m not of the genetic makeup, stature or skill-level to be part of the NBA will I dismiss its possibility altogether.
Right even if I grant that it’s in principle impossible to will an abstract objects physical instantiation in the real world. Is not the same thing as saying that, there’s a disconnect between, “our conscious experience and the real world.” After all, I could prod your brain in such a way that you see a different color or move your arm, or believe something entirely different. A clear indication that the conscious world and the physical world may not be that disconnected.