Determinism and Back To The Future
I've had a thought bouncing in my head today and I want to give it some air and let you folks at it to see where it takes on water.
The theory is that there's a contradiction, or misalignment maybe, between how most people feel about the philosophical concept of free will and how time travel and time loops are portrayed in media. Here's the premises I've landed on to arrive at that:
(1) The vast majority of people believe in some form of free will. (Fairly non contentious, I hope. A lot of resources back this up.)
(2) For free will to exist, if a person is repeatedly prompted to make some sort of decision under the exact same circumstances (time, place, people, etc) there must be a non-zero amount of times that they will arrive at a decision different from their initial one. For example... lets suppose you walk into the room and ask me what I want for dinner. I chew on some options for a moment then decide "chicken and rice". Then my memory is wiped and we repeat this over and over. After a few repeats of this I end up settling on a steak burrito instead. This is the only way free will could work imo because the opposite result, if given the same input you always arrive at the same output, is no different than determinism. Plus it implies, much like the time loop/travel media show, that from the start of the day we can know exactly where we will end up at the end if nothing is changed- which leaves no wiggle room for free will.
(3) The people in time travel / time loop media who are not your faithful protagonist or otherwise aware of the time based shenanigans going on always do the exact same thing every time (at least, in the ones I've seen). It's only the ones who are aware of how events have already unfolded who can make new decisions, everyone and everything else plays out the same.
Thus, virtually all media portray time travel/loops in a way that doesn't jive with how the vast majority of people perceive free will.
So, what do you think- Do you agree with the conclusion? Do you disagree on the definition of free will? Should I have gone with my alternate title? (12 Deterministic Monkeys starring Bruce Free Willis)
I believe in compatibilism, or the idea that free will and determinism are not mutually exclusive and its not a contradiction to have both.
If you could rewind time and asked me what my favorite flavor of ice cream is a million different times, erasing my memory every time Memento style, Im going to say chocolate ever single time. Thats not a lack of free will, thats just having a consistent personality. Maybe every one in a billion times I have a stroke at just the right moment and blurt out vanilla instead, but thats not really a true representation of my opinion, and Im not really choosing to do it in that case.
Doing stuff completely at random would be just as much a nonchoice as doing stuff the same way as making the same choice every single time, but neither of those I think are a good way of thinking about the concept of a choice to begin with.
The idea that "free will" needs to mean that a choice cant be explained deterministically I believe is derivative of the Christian idea that God exists and has absolute control everything, but at the same time humans can defy Gods will, which requires that humanity have some special ability to choose that transcends natural law. It needs to be the case that Free Will cannot follow any consistency, because otherwise you could conceive of a form of Free Will where everyone still somehow consistently chooses to be good every time, and therefore there is an apparent paradox of why a benevolent God wouldnt do this.
But if you dont believe in a perfectly benevolent omnipotent God, then this particular conception of free will doesnt need to be the case, because there are other ways to explain the existence of Evil.
Interesting; I consider myself a hard incompatibilist on the subject of free will (i.e. that under both the assumption of a deterministic OR an indeterministic universe, free will is impossible), but, that is based on a definition of free will closer to the one you prescribe to a belief in the Christian god - that a person can make a choice that is disjoint from the surrounding causal universe. I don't personally believe that that sense of free will stems from a Christian worldview though, or at least that it is present outside cultures that are heavily affected by Christian culture.
But, under your understanding of free will, I can only agree. If "free will" means that my actions are based on my memories and internal state, and that because of that I would always make the same choice under the same conditions if we assume determinism, then yes I see no other way. But I fail to see how that kind of free will is a useful concept, other than as a descriptor of the sense that one has a choice under determinism. The internal state feels that it makes a choice, but the choice is still deterministic if the surrounding world is deterministic. And I have never met anyone who did not at least have the sense that hey made their choice, even if the logically believed that the choice was deterministic, and thus no other choice could have been made under the present circumstances and them having had the history they had.
It also, at least from my own experience, is not how most people view free will as a concept. Usually, when I discuss the concept of free will, what is meant is the ability to choose, despite determinism. Or at least, that there is a meaningful way in which one could have made another choice, and faced with the same situation might have done so, despite a belief that the surrounding world is at least predictable, if not hard deterministic. But, my experience is also that most people don't actually think too hard about the scope and breath of a deterministic world, being somewhat agnostic to the difference between something being seemingly random (because of inadequate predictive power) and actually random, and not really interrogating the difference between feeling like they can make choices, and actually being able to make choices.
A variation of this last point is my initial assumption of your stance as a I read your comment, but I suspect that I'm either wrong, or don't fully understand your position.
Why do you have the definition of free will that you have? How is it meaningfully different from the concept of determinism as a whole?
Also, if you would like, how would your stance be on the conflict between free will and determinism under the "Christian" definition of free will?
I agree that the concept of free will as I describe it is not particularly useful. I think the concept as a whole ultimately isnt that important, and is more of a paradox to be resolved than anything.
For the concept of free will as you describe it, I think is still reconcilable with physical determinism. Because our modern scientific understanding contains inherent randomness due to quantum uncertainty.
Lets say you have a super advanced EEG and can see every neuron in a brain. You ask the test subhect to choose between two identical cubes, one on the left and one on the right. You see on the EEG that there is a train of neurons firing that are associated with that choice. In both cases the train of neurons starts the same, but the second half is different depending on whether you pick left or right. From this, you isolate a single neuron, or a single cluster of neurons, that ultimately decides which choice you make. Whether or not you choose Left depends on that one neuron firing, and whether that neuron fires depends on it crossing a particular voltage threshold.
In that scenario, if you are truly ambivalent, the first half of the train should put the voltage right on the cusp of firing, and whether or not it crosses is based on the random noise associated with that voltage, which will be based on the random motion of electrons around it. This is an inherently random process that we could not possibly predict.
I dont really know how that would work with time travel, do quantum effects change if you go back in time? Who can say?
I think in that case you could say free will has been achieved, because there is a way for your brain to follow determiniatic patterns but you still could choose either one with a 50/50 chance. I just dont think thats any more meaningful a choice than if it was 100%. Thats like making a choice based on a coin flip, its kind of a non-choice to me.
I view this similar to determinism itself. Determinism is not a useful concept for living one's life. I think the idea that one feels they chose to make the choice is the meaningful version of 'free will', but I still don't believe in free will. I see it as two sides of the same coin. If you believe in determinism, I don't believe you can live your life thinking everything is predetermined and that you have no control, not as an active thought process anyhow. You have to rationalize some way to motivate yourself to do things or 'choose' things. So whether you believe in free will or not, you live with the illusion of choice as part of an active thought process. The only difference is what you see when you step out of those normal thought processes to philosophically think about them.
If anything, I think the ability to view the other side of the coin as 'free will' rather than a necessary illusion of determinism is a protection mechanism for people where the illusion fails to overcome the recognition of determinism to keep someone from spiraling. I'd argue that in my own personal case, I would be a happier, more productive and successful person if I had been able to view and embrace the side of the coin that sees free will. I'm someone who has a very high external locus of control. It's a bit of a chicken and egg perhaps, my external locus of control may have drawn me to the concept of determinism to explain and justify my feelings of control, or my thoughts of determinism pulled me towards an external locus of control, or more likely, they both played off each other a bit.
If you believe in determinism, wouldn't "rationalize some way to motivate yourself to do things or 'choose' things" also be outside of your control? It's a bit ambiguous, but I assume you mean "You have to rationalize..." as "your life will suck if you don't rationalize...", rather than "the quantum state of things will inevitably end up in you rationalizing...".
Well there are multiple aspects to it. Consciousness being an illusion of control or choice is baked into this. No one knows what they are predetermined to do anyhow, so how do you reconcile that everything is predetermined but you know nothing about it? You can't turn off your consciousness (well...), you can't know what is predetermined, yet you somehow have to continue to think and act and live one way or another (well...). So if you're going to remain alive, and you're going to maintain your consciousness that 'thinks', then fighting the natural state of your existence is futile (the natural state being illusion of control). Yes it is more the case that 'your life will suck if you don't rationalize' but I question whether anyone can exist to discuss it otherwise if they can't reconcile that on some level.
Even everything I'm writing, you can examine it as though I'm saying things almost as if I believed in free will even though I said I don't, but I simply cannot comprehend a mind state where someone can't think that way as a default state. It's baked into consciousness as I see it. I wouldn't even know how to describe the consciousness of a person who exists but doesn't have some illusion of control. At that point I almost compare it to what other people commonly view lower order animals as relative to humans, which it seems to me many people don't think other non-human animals have consciousness. I don't necessarily think that way, I actually think otherwise, but I still can't comprehend what their consciousness is if they have it if it's not like human consciousness (or my consciousness anyhow). The only consciousness I know how to comprehend is the one where we're bound to live under an illusion of control. The difference in how people cope beyond that is how much the idea of determinism weaves into their illusion of control, which is a given that they still maintain at least some semblance of it, but that intersection is where it crosses to a possibility of 'your life will suck if you don't rationalize'.
I think i get what you're saying, even if we believe in determinism it doesn't feel like our own thoughts and actions are predetermined. I honestly don't know where I stand on determinism, but I don't think me getting convinced in either direction would change how much control it feels like I have.
I don't think most people have a perception of free will that squares with what you're presenting. I think most people would fall more into the determinism camp. That is, if you presented me the exact same option a million times with exactly the same conditions, I'd make the exact same choice.
In your #2 example, you would choose differently many times because it's impossible to control every variable. Even though your memory gets wiped, your physical condition would be different each time. You'd be slightly more or less tired or hungry, the temperature would be slightly different each time, your experience that morning getting to the lab would be different, and even failing all of that, your mind will physically age slightly each time you repeat the experiment. The only way to perfectly control every variable would be a magic movie-esque time loop. In those conditions, I do believe that most people would think that they'd always make the same decision on each iteration of the loop. For evidence of this, no one generally has a problem with the characters of groundhog day taking the same actions each day unless Bill Murray's character somehow influences them.
That may or not be the case in real life, but we have no feasible way to actually test that hypothesis.
I think you're probably correct here, but I think that's also part main character syndrome "in this movie I'd obviously be Bill Murray, not some bystander". As well as the "this already happened, so of course the outcome is deterministic" or maybe even "that's just the premise of the movie". I haven't heard anyone complain that timeloops like that aren't realistic either, and I'm pretty sure they don't think they happens. To summarize, I think you're right, but I don't find the evidence very strong.
I think that @grayscail really nailed it all around.
The problem is your point 2. Free will does have to include the ability to make bad decisions but it doesn't have to include the desire to make bad decisions. And, y'know, "objects in motion tend to remain in motion" is a useful concept in ethical analysis, too.
But there's one more piece you're missing, which is that time travel movies are stories, and the characters who don't change each loop aren't really characters, they're setting. That stasis is part of what allows us to filter forward the characters who are dynamic and are making ethical decisions — those who are affected by the time, travel, typically.
I think the idea you captured from movies on time travel actually do square better with most peoples ideas of free will than how you explained free will. Most people would say that they exercise some degree of reason in the exercise of their free will. If the circumstances are the same for each time they make the decision, I don't think many would argue against the idea that they would make the same decision, since the reasons for doing so would also be the same. I don't believe that many would argue that having reasons for our decisions is an argument against free will, so I would conclude that these two things; namely free will and rational decision making, are not in conflict in most peoples understanding of the two.
Just finished The Stand, so this general theme stands out: God may have a will for you, a plan, but you always have a choice.
Even as a nonbeliever, this resonates. In the book, several characters are presented a choice to do better.....and they just don't.
In the supernatural world of King, Good and Evil are by and large weak forces, which rely on manipulation and influence of others to accomplish anything.
Or in other words: The existence or non-existence of God (and subsequently free will) yields the same results: If you want to change something, you must to stand for what you need/want to.