Recommend an essay, article, entry, author, or branch of philosophy that addresses the futility of arguing for or against free will

Question

I did first search this site, but I was not allowed to participate because I am new (I guess). There is a lot of great content here so I guess that is warranted (though it doesn't feel that way). That being said...

It seems to me, as aware as I am of my own ignorance having not stood on the shoulders of giants or those who have had much more in depth in musings on the topic, that the very framework of cause-and-effect we are using to make sense of the idea of freewill has already ruled out its possible existence. It seems futile, almost silly to me to even discuss it in terms of cause and effect. Well, not entirely futile, but it does seem silly sometimes how much time we spend on it in that context.

Answer 1

Arguing for or against free will is futile, pointless and downright impossible to begin with. Free will is not a claim or a theory or a philosophical standpoint.

There is no consensus on what the phrase "free will" refers to. There is no universally accepted definition. Therefore no discussion should be started before agreeing on the definition.

When operating within one agreed definition, there is no uncertainty whether free will is a real thing or an imaginary thing. The definition defines.

It is quite pointless to define free will as a matter of belief, subject to debate. The very idea of a definition is to end the debate and start discussing the actual thing being defined.

My advice is to avoid literature that says "we don't have free will" or "we do have free will" and then gives a list of arguments to back up this claim. Look for literature that discusses the various definitions for free will. Information philosopher is one good source; The information philosopher

Answer 2

If I understand your question, you are asking specifically about philosophers who were inclined to dismiss questions about freedom, rather than to argue about whether there is freedom or not.

One such is Wittgenstein. In the Tractatus Wittgenstein dismisses free will as a pseudo-problem and claims that our sense of freedom arises from the fact that we cannot know our own future.

In two lectures given in 1939 and later published as Lectures on Freedom of the Will, Wittgenstein argues that there is no metaphysical fact concerning freedom and determinism, but rather that these represent attitudes or psychological dispositions that we bring to bear when thinking about our actions, and these give rise to distinct and contrasting language games.

In his more mature writing, e.g. in the Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty, Wittgenstein avoids using the word 'free' in the context of action. This is because he regards freedom as something that contrasts with compulsion not with causation, so freedom is not inconsistent with actions being caused. Wittgenstein speaks of our being bewitched by our use of language into thinking there is a substantial philosophical problem when there really is none.

This approach of attempting to dissolve rather solve philosophical problems was enthusiastically adopted by the ordinary language school of philosophy that was mainstream in Oxford in the 1950s and 60s. It is reflected in papers such as John Austin's A Plea for Excuses, and also Ifs and Cans. Also in Peter Strawson's Freedom and Resentment.

Answer 3

Pertti gives some good advice about definitions. What is the exact type of freedom we are arguing for? However, this challenge is not unique to free will but philosophy in general, hence I do not think it's futile to have this discussion but we do need to acknowledge that "free will" is too vague -- apart from grabbing clicks and book deals, a serious discussion of this (or any philosophical topic) requires a lot more adjectives and qualifications ;)

Free will has been a long-time interest of mine, so I'll offer my thoughts and suggestions for more reading for you. At the risk of oversimplifying, we have two broad camps:

Countercausal free will (libertarianism and it's relatives): The freedom to do otherwise in the exact same circumstances. The current state of the universe (S) does not determine our behavior in the next moment. We had the freedom to choose a different option.

Compatibilist free will: Freedom is the ability to choose the option that is consistent with our reasons and desires. We do not have the ability to choose other than we do. The current state of the world has a deterministic and/or random relationship to the future state.

To me, the crux of the debate centers on the causal mechanism underlying the freedom being argued for.

• Event-based causation: events cause events -- this view doesn't really have room for freedom in the libertarian sense so is often associated with compatibilist and determinist positions.
• Agent-based/substance causation: Causes "originate" in agents or substances, not events. The key difference being agents are argued to have a novel sort of indeterminism that is non-random.

Both of these views rub against some deep intuitions we have while also playing to others.

The agent-based causation view best aligns with our experience of ourselves as owners or "originators" of our choices -- there is this sense that our choices are ours in a way that could (or should) be independent of the myriad drives and external forces. There is a decidedly moral dimension to this sense, as exemplified by the complement "He/she is strong of will" -- meaning they are able to maintain this inner freedom despite external causes and forces.

However, once we scratch the surface, we find it hard to identify how this type of freedom doesn't boil down to involuntary or random choice despite our feeling or desire to have it be "determined by us". If we can give a reason we chose something, then it was the playing out of these reasons that led to our choice (not some je ne sais quoi). If we cannot, then it appears that agent-based free will operates arbitrarily. If we argue that our free will chooses the reasons, then we are left with the same questions about why those reasons, and so on.

It's not clear how you can give a coherent definition of this non-deterministic/non-random process. From a computer science viewpoint, such an algorithm cannot exist, so I fail to see how this idea holds.

The event-based causation best-aligns with our experience of things other than us, where we see apparent cause and effect as "this happens then that happens". The advent of computers has offered a (too) ready analogy for our minds that also exemplifies event-based causation. The main issue with event-based is that is implies our mental events are caused by prior mental events and so there isn't a "thing" that sits in between -- but we feel this "homunculus" very strongly. So strongly we cannot not thinks as if we did have countercausal free will.

At the root is if there really can be such as thing as a non-random/non-deterministic algorithm. That would be a great place to read up on, as there is a long history of research here from computer science: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/321420.321422

Answer 4

IMO the problem of free-will is: How to reconcile our general experience to be the agent of our actions with the causal determinism which is the basic heuristics of science?

Approaching this problem requires an operationable definition of agency on the basis of free-will. The best definition I know is due to Peter Bieri from his book “Das Handwerk der Freiheit” (In German, 2001). According to Bieri a person feels free, i.e. acts according to his free-will, when he/she acts in harmony with his general principles. The person developed these principles during his previous life. They were triggered by different sources. Broadly speaking: Acting free = Acting in agreement with oneself.

To me the following proposals are no longer in the race:

• Free will = the possibility to have decided in a different way; not testable because the original situation cannot be reconstructed.

• Free will on the basis of quantum mechanical indeterminism; the physiology of our brain operates on a different scale than quantum mechanics.

Answer 5

One such author that I'm surprised no one in this thread mentioned is Immanuel Kant.

In the 'Critique of Pure Reason' he states that everything in nature (meaning taking place in space and time) is deterministic, and hence we have no free will. On the other hand, if we look from the perspective of the thing-in-itself everything is free, including our will.

This leads to one of his famous antinomies that our reason inevitably leads us into, and it is futile to argue either way.

Also Henri Bergson in his 'Time and Free Will' has a somewhat similar argument to Kant's and he shows that both free-will / determinism are incomplete descriptions of reality.

Answer 6

I recommend against the definitions-first approach suggested by Pertti. Instead, list some phenomena or alleged phenomena that "free will" is supposed to be illustrated by, or to help explain. Let's say these are P, Q, and R. If there seem to be conceptual linkages - free will requires X, for some X - keep digging. By that I mean, ask why should free will require X? Often you will find that people have deeper reasons for believing that free will requires X: free will requires Y, and they believe Y requires X. Repeat until you seem to hit rock bottom, let's say Z.

And then, endeavor to find what actually does explain these phenomena, using physics, psychology, first-person experimentation, or whatever you can bring to bear. If P, Q, R, and Z are real properties, relations, or processes, and P,Q,R have something in common, then you have arrived at an excellent place to offer a definition. If P, Q, and most but not all R have something in common, you may still be in a pretty-good place. And so on. Douglas Kutach calls this method empirical analysis, an improved form of conceptual analysis. But you should expect to hit complications. For example, if Z is something about causal connections or lack thereof, you'll need to face the fact that actual physics contains nothing that meets all our intuitive beliefs about "causation", but several different phenomena that meet some of our intuitive beliefs about "causation". You'll then want one or more empirical analyses of causation. Then reformulate Z as ZA, ZB, and ZC, say, and examine each for rock-bottom requirement status.

This is hard work, but I think it does pay off. Cards on the table, I think you'll find that on some empirically adequate definitions of "causation", causation is limited to macroscopic events, and mostly peters out over time periods much shorter than a human life. While on others, "causation" is universal among physical processes (which I think include mental processes), but not problematic for free will.

Answer 7

One of the members of my philosophy cafe made this claim repeatedly: that there was no practical difference between assuming free will vs. determinism, and therefore it was a pointless debate. I expect he gleaned this argument from some published philosopher, but I do not have a reference to link you to.

I never agreed with the argument, and offer instead this contrary question, in which a large number of determinists argue to SUPPRESS the truth of determinism, for our own good! If Free Will Is Proven Illusory, Is There a Case for Suppressing the Finding? I tried out an answer on that one.

I have also tried to characterize the conditions necessary for libertarian free will to plausibly matter in our world, and have come up with 3, and with rationales that all three apply to our world:

1. The world must be indeterminate. This appears to be the case, with the Heisenberg uncertainty principle preventing ever characterizing a prior state, the statistical nature of QM leading to non-deterministic outcomes, and science being radically open based on the nature of how science operates (there are no certainties, we take everything as contingent, with an open TBD future knowledge).

2. The non-deterministic nature of our world, if the non-determinism is only in micro physics, must have some way to leverage up to varying macro scale consequences, or else the non-determinism would be irrelevant. This too appears to be the case for chaotic phenomena, of which living things are examples (of bounded chaotic systems). For example a gamma ray quantum event a galaxy away, with non-determinism of timing and direction, can trigger cancer in a living system. This leverages micro scale consequences up to macro systems from quantum phenomena.

3. Causation must be traceable to more than two options of explicit causation, and randomness. There has to be as a minimum a third causation option of agent causation in our universe. As logical pluralism is the case, there are an infinity of logics. We have not yet found an Agent Causation logic that both matches our universe, and enables libertarian free will, but with infinite logics this should be possible. The best writer I have found to date exploring agent causation is Helen Steward: https://www.amazon.com/Metaphysics-Freedom-Helen-Steward/dp/0198706464

If all three of these conditions apply to our universe, and the first two definitely do, while there is no reason I have seen why the third would not, then I think it reasonable to conclude our universe has real libertarian free will.

Answer 8

that the very framework of cause-and-effect we are using to make sense of the idea of freewill has already ruled out its possible existence.

Physicalism and body mind monism rule out libertarian free will.

But compatibilist free will as could be exhibited by computer programs in fully deterministic and controlled settings is still a possible definition.

And it's discussion is not generally considered futile, because lots of non-philosophers would use the certainty in libertarian free will to doubt physicalism or monnism, for lack of understanding of compatibilism.

But writings in compatibilist free like by Daniel Dennett may point out why it's futile to discuss libertarian free will within a physicalist monist framework.

Some writers may also argue with incompatibilism that there is no free will in physicalism and monism (and that thus it is futile to discuss) but that position is not very prevalent. Incompatibilist writers typically rather promote body mind dualism in one form or the other.