[FRIAM] Free will - restart

[Eric Charles]

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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