[FRIAM] Free will - restart

[Gary Schiltz]

Indeed your "trollish" post is a fair one. I think the ability/discipline
to outline and attack this problem has, as I alluded to for myself, more to
do with human behavior and less with lack of ability. I believe most human
actions are motivated by the old "carrot or stick" idea, that we expend
effort on something in order to either gain some advantage or avoid some
pain. Informal lists like this, largely populated with folks for whom have
already obtained all the carrots they want, and don't see much pain to be
endured from writing rambling stream-of-consciousness posts, are unwilling
to put out the effort to do the organization necessary. I don't mean that
as a criticism of anyone, just my perspective (mostly applied to myself).
Herding cats :-) Cheers!

On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 10:51 AM Eric Charles <
eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com> wrote:

> So... this is going to be a bit trollish... but I think fair....
>
> I read a few incredibly long threads about free will over the last week,
> and they mostly seem to be examples of the problem I was talking about
> during the virtual-meeting last week: Arguments where we can't tell what's
> a disagreement about words vs a disagreement about ideas. It's like someone
> with a stick drew some chicken scratch in the sand spelling out "Eff are
> eee eee <space> double-uew eye el el" and then everyone lined up to mark
> their territory, and say a few words while they were doing it.
>
> At no point were the various functions of the terms broken out and
> resolved, at no point were new words introduced for the concepts at play so
> the territory-marking could stop.
>
> There has to be some good way to break out of those conversations. We
> should be able to identify those situations more readily, and resolve them
> more readily. What are the ideas at play (however they are being labeled)?
> Of those ideas, which, if any, are actually in dispute? Why are different
> positions in that dispute held?
>
> Or do we just want to fight over what a word *should *refer to? That is
> also a fine conversation to have. But there has got to be a better way to
> have it than waiting to see who has the bigger bladder.
>
> ---------------------
>
> Here are some of the issues in that particular argument:
>
> 1) Historically and at present "free will" is a morally charged issue.
> Most normal people were/are interested in it because of its role in moral
> reasoning. This is not to say it is a religious issue.  "Free will' is the
> difference between murder and manslaughter, it is central to parental
> discipline and social mockery. That concept of free will is something
> several people have argued we could do away with completely. (I recommend
> "Beyond Freedom and Dignity".)
> 2) Like many old-fashioned concepts, there are those who have tried to
> retreat "free will" into physics. It is unclear what the function of "free
> will" is in such an argument, and why we would care if it existed (i.e.,
> unclear why we care if we are not trying to prop up its role in moral
> reasoning).
> 3) The retreat into physics can go a "systems" route or a "quantum" route.
> The system route starts to talk about up-causation, down-causation,
> circular-causation, dynamic systems theory, control theory, etc. The
> quantum route starts talking about indeterminacy at ridiculously small
> levels. However, while it is clear those discussions *are *looking for
> *something*, it is almost never clear how that something relates to
> anything that would have been understood as "free will' at any point in
> human history before the last half-century or so.
>
>
>
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