Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> Dennett just redefines free will.

So what? The fact is that the "free will" you appear to want to talk about does not and cannot exist, whereas the "free will" Dennett is talking about does exist and has important real-world consequences. So, to be blunt, why should I care about your preferred definition? What's the point of going on and on about something that doesn't and can't exist? Who cares?

There's a good footnote in Dennett's paper that speaks to this point:

''I'm writing a book on magic," I explain, and I'm asked, "Real magic?" By real magic people mean miracles, thaumaturgical, and supernatural powers. "No," I answer: "Conjuring tricks, not real magic." Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic. (p42S) -Lee Siegel, Net of Magic

I'd rather talk about free will that can actually exist, than complain about free will that doesn't and can't exist.

> If you can consciously choose from a menu of thoughts, but you don't consciously choose the menu, is that free will in a meaningful sense?

It's certainly better than not being able to choose anything--or worse, being forced to suffer the consequences of the bad choices of others.

Dennett makes a comment in one of his books on this topic: "There are very real threats to our freedom, but they are not metaphysical." Telling people that they don't have free will, in real terms, amounts to telling them to suck it up while the evil, predatory people in the world, who know perfectly well that they do have free will and have no compunction about exercising it at others' expense, take all their goodies, instead of choosing to fight back. Sorry, not buying it.

> So what? The fact is that the "free will" you appear to want to talk about does not and cannot exist, whereas the "free will" Dennett is talking about does exist and has important real-world consequences. So, to be blunt, why should I care about your preferred definition? What's the point of going on and on about something that doesn't and can't exist? Who cares?

Because it's a poor rhetorical tactic, one used quite often in this and other topics, that confuses the subject rather than adding clarity and mutual understanding. Redefining the subject of a debate in the middle of such a debate is a recipe for talking past one another (which these two have done at length multiple times and never seem to quite understand how much they're talking past one another, or at least never acknowledge it so as to "win" more) rather than coming to a better understanding. Neither one can be wrong or right because neither really acknowledges the other, they're just sort of talking about related (but different) subjects at the same time using the same term in different ways, to the consternation of passer bys who end up joining one camp or the other not realizing they can easily be in both.

> Telling people that they don't have free will, in real terms, amounts to telling them to suck it up while the evil, predatory people in the world, who know perfectly well that they do have free will and have no compunction about exercising it at others' expense, take all their goodies, instead of choosing to fight back.

That's not what it tells them at all, and indeed this is a common point of confusion that could be alleviated without all the talking past one another. A better synthesis would be:

- Acknowledge one does not directly author one's own thoughts (either by way of the vast literature of neuroscience or simply closely observing the nature of thought)

- Acknowledge the vast role of forces outside our direct individual control in our understanding of ourselves and others

- Acknowledge our ignorance of full causation of any given thought or action and the scoping differences of emergent systems

- Acknowledge regardless of the first two and because of the third at an individual and societal level there is very real meaning to responsibility and attribution of action to a locus of control (be that individual or grouping of individuals)

Compatibilism (of which Dennett is a proponent) more or less just says the 4th is actually compatible with the 1st. And that's completely reasonable, but we'd save a lot of time in these debates by taking great pains to acknowledge the difference in scope and context as opposed to arguing which one we want to call "free will."

> And that's completely reasonable, but we'd save a lot of time in these debates by taking great pains to acknowledge the difference in scope and context as opposed to arguing which one we want to call "free will."

Except Dennett's use is compatible with how laypeople seem to reason morally [1], and it further agrees with centuries of legal precedent that accounts for free choice, so there is a good justification for defining this as free will.

I also reject the framing that free will already had a definition that Compatibilists are trying to redefine. The whole debate is about what qualities free will has that can make sense of choice and responsibility. This debate didn't start with "free will must have qualities X, Y or it's not free will", it started with discussion about what sorts of control we may have over choices and what this entails about our responsibility, and free will is the descriptor for the kind of choice that entails responsibility.

Compatibilism provides a coherent definition that largely matches how people talk about and reason about this topic, so exactly why should that not settle the debate and require us all to understand that this is free will?

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274892120_Why_Compa...

> it further agrees with centuries of legal precedent that accounts for free choice, so there is a good justification for defining this as free will.

Of all possible reasons to argue for compatibalism, I would not choose this.

Historical precedent is often wrong, and often horribly so. This particular issue happens to be one that leaves us mostly in the dark while many of the provably incorrect historical precedents have been addressed by growing scientific knowledge.

As neuroscience progresses and converges with philosophical thoughts on the subject, I think philosophers will have stronger ground to build on. Until then, I’m not looking to historical precedent for answers, on a topic that seems very incompatible with such a source of wisdom.

> Compatibilism provides a coherent definition that largely matches how people talk about and reason about this topic, so exactly why should that not settle the debate and require us all to understand that this is free will?

“Religion and the existence of god provides a coherent framework that largely matches how people talk and reason about existence and morality, so exactly why should that not settle the debate and require us to all understand that this is our origin?”.

This is a sentence that would not have raised very many eyebrows at one time. It seems that you are arguing for compatibilism on the basis that it matches how people currently make sense of our notions of free will?

Accepting “good enough” approximations, especially when examining issues of ethics and morality seems extremely problematic and likely to create blind spots.

> “Religion and the existence of god provides a coherent framework that largely matches how people talk and reason about existence and morality, so exactly why should that not settle the debate and require us to all understand that this is our origin?”.

Except that's wrong. Theism is not a coherent framework at all, and it doesn't at all explain our origins in a way that's compatible with observation. By contrast, Compabitilism is a coherent framework in which to reason about choice and responsibility, and it agrees with how people intuitively approach this as tested empirically, and it agrees with one of the greatest ethical equalizers we've found: law.

You can crap on the law all you want, but it was the first great step towards social justice that tore down the power of monarchs and divine rule and started the process of treating all people on equal footing. Science has an equally storied history of mistakes, and yet you clearly value its current state, and so I'm saying don't be so dismissive of progress and precedent in law. It too has been shaped deep of philosophical debate among tens of thousands of people over hundreds of years. Don't fail to learn the lessons of the past.

> Except that's wrong. Theism is not a coherent framework at all, and it doesn't at all explain our origins in a way that's compatible with observation.

This misses the point, and I'd ask that you reframe how you read my statement as a thought experiment. Saying this is wrong is a claim you can now confidently make within the context of a system of understanding that has advanced far beyond the confines of what religion could explain. The inherent limits of religion necessitated some better explanation.

Prior to the existence of that new understanding, and during the time in which that new understanding was brand new, appeals to "how people talk and reason" were appeals to religion, and the arguments for it perfectly coherent given the tools of thought available at the time. As science introduced new tools, consensus thinking shifted accordingly.

My point is that an argument for compatibilism that appeals to the common vernacular as a primary point of validation is not a very convincing argument.

> You can crap on the law all you want, but it was the first great step towards social justice...

This is a binary mindset, and I'm not crapping on the law - it is both valuable and necessary. Finding issues with certain laws or modes of thinking about law are not an implication that laws are not useful. The point is that laws are just a tool, and are not by themselves an indicator of enlightenment or the best possible solution. We know this to be true by looking at the reform of immoral/unethical laws over time. The underlying frameworks of understanding used to author laws within the legal system are just as important as the legal system itself (see: abortion, slavery, segregation...).

If we only used the good things law has achieved to justify the existence of other laws, gay marriage would still be illegal, most states would still be incarcerating people for smoking weed, and segregation would still be alive and well.

> Science has an equally storied history of mistakes, and yet you clearly value its current state, and so I'm saying don't be so dismissive of progress and precedent in law.

I don't think I'm dismissing any progress or precedent at all. I'm saying we should not use precedent to stop us from making progress. This is something science is better at than some disciplines, but even science remains susceptible to dogma and binary thinking.

> Don't fail to learn the lessons of the past.

As a form of argument about philosophy, this is a problematic conclusion. At a minimum, you would need to explain why some lessons are better to learn than others, and on what basis they are better or worse.

But setting that aside, and in the context of our understanding of the science of human consciousness, why is there any implication at all that exploring the true nature of free will is incompatible with learning from the past?

This seems to me like more of the same talking past this subject is rife with. I didn't purport to frame any such definition as "first," the context of my reply was referring specifically to a Dennett rebuttal to a Harris essay, which is by definition not first.

To me the semantics of what one wants to call free will really don't matter and aren't worth much discussion, yet they seem to be primarily what gets discussed. What matters is clarity and context (context being do you want to talk about how minds and the universe works or do you want to talk about moral or societal responsibility), and trying discuss which one ought to be called free will seems to me to be yak shaving.

I'd agree the debate is actually fairly largely settled for now, as I pointed out in my bullets in the previous reply. There is still much to figure out about neurology and the origin of thought, and about societal cohesion, but the fundamentals there seem pretty solid for as long as we're mostly human. I add that last caveat because I think these concerns actually do start to merge once a mind is capable of fully experiencing and conceptually recognizing causal lines (physical, chemical, or otherwise), which certainly seems to be not in the cards for us biologically and may even be theoretically impossible, but I wouldn't rule out just yet. In such a world with such minds things would look quite a bit different, and there would be much less daylight between every day morality and mechanistic functions underlying the minds a play.

> To me the semantics of what one wants to call free will really don't matter and aren't worth much discussion, yet they seem to be primarily what gets discussed.

It matters quite a bit I think, because otherwise it's an impediment to communication. Just look around at all the pushback from unnecessary changes to language due to so-called "wokeness". If a term has a coherent conception and is mostly well understood and commonly utilized by people, I don't see the value in trying to change that language.

In this context, Harris is just one in a long line of people leveling this accusation that Compatibilism is changing the definition of free will, where it seems instead that it empirically matches how people actually use this term.

This is not to say that you specifically were making this argument, but it's been implicit (and sometimes explicit) undercurrent in this whole thread.

> It matters quite a bit I think, because otherwise it's an impediment to communication.

It sounds like we agree on the problem but disagree on the solution. I would argue most of the impediment to communication on this subject is exactly because people are trying much too hard to brand a certain conceptualization "free will" and trying to delineate different contexts and scenarios far too little. It's absolutely worthwhile to clarify what context one is referring to when using the term. It's absolutely a waste of time to try and assert this context is the only correct context to do so.

I agree that we can find broad agreement on the facts if we replace "free will" with baggage-free terms, but this still leaves open the question of what people actually mean when they hold someone responsible for a freely made choice, and whether this is justified. Under Compatibilism it is, but otherwise it mostly isn't.

In my experience, everyone arguing about brains and the universe is trying to justify something like the Consequence Argument, in which I think my insistence on a Compatibilist definition of free will is justified.

> everyone arguing about brains and the universe is trying to justify something like the Consequence Argument

That hasn't been my experience at all, usually I see claims about the brains and universe being made from epistemic grounds, and indeed they are valuable in of themselves even if purely academic. The nature of our reality is worth discovering on its own merit, rather than just discarding in favor of saying that's not what we're really talking about (when indeed some of us are talking about that!).

All the more reason to be clear about context.

I agree that investigation into how the brain and the universe works is valuable. I was saying that whenever they are brought up in the context of a discussion of free will and moral responsibility it's because they're building up to a type of Consequence Argument. If you still disagree, then perhaps you can provide an example of what you mean because I'm not getting the distinction you're trying to make.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com