Is free will a third option aside from chance and necessity?

Question

The determinism dilemma is that if our actions are predetermined they are not free, and if they are random they are not willed, either way there is no free will. Even if will causation is a mixture of chance and necessity it can be split into the corresponding aspects according to an argument that goes back to Hobbes, reinstating the dilemma: "in order to make the causation somehow indeterministic, a realization of a random variable (completely uncaused and independent) would have to be put amongst the conditions." To put it metaphorically, we are puppets dangling on the strings of causality, or chance, or both part time.

A popular response is the two stage model of free will, where at the first stage actionable alternatives are "freely" generated, and at the second the one that "best" suits our goals and desiresis "willed". Trouble is that the "free" stage is not willed, the "will" stage is not free, and the freedom itself is reduced to imperfection, inability to survey all possible alternatives. Although the model itself is relatively uncontroversial (both Dennett and Kane accept it!) it concedes the Hobbesian split into chance and necessity, and merely shifts the dilemma to the second stage.

But we know of at least one type of processes, where the Hobbesian split can not be accomplished, quantum evolutions. I am not suggesting quantum mechanics as a physical model of volition (but such suggestions were made, by Compton using macroscopic amplification of quantum effects, and Penrose using hypothetical "quantum gravity"), or even saying that it is a "complete" description of reality. But it is a model where the wave function "is all there is" by definition, and it is self-consistent if set theory is.

The wave function is neither deterministic, nor random, nor a "mixture" of the two (see Bell's inequalities). We get a model for events that provably can not be split into a mixture of chance and necessity along the Hobbesian lines envisioned by the dilemma. Free will does not have to operate anything like quantum evolution of course, the point is that combinations of chance and necessity do not exhaust logical possibilities, the two can be entangled in unsplittable ways.

Is the determinism dilemma a false dichotomy? Were non chance/necessity options explored by philosophers as models of how free will might operate? Specifically, how "goals and desires" can be factored into volition without resorting to partial causation?

Answer 1

It is not a viable option. Only chance or necessity are implied by the fundamental fact that all thoughts arise impersonally. As William James, among others, noted: "If we could say 'it thinks' the way we say 'it rains' we would be speaking with a minimum of assumption." When added to the other fundamental fact that all thoughts "governing" movement have the immediate effect of movement unless another thought intervenes, the minimum of assumption conclusion is that what we believe to be an act of free will is an automatic response to a stimulus of unascertainable origin. From a psychological perspective, only indeterminism, supportive of either metaphysical option of necessity or chance, is viable. My essay on James's vivid engagement with the question of free will was published in the anthology The Volitional Brain: Toward a Neuroscience of Free Will, and is available on my website.

Answer 2

The failure of the dilemma comes in denying that free will is a primary causal factor in the physical realm. To answer the dilemma, we must posit three possible primary causal factors which can drive physical causal chains:

1. Deterministic inputs
2. Random inputs
3. Free Will inputs

However, there is no direct empirical evidence or proof for free will being a primary casual factor. We posit its existence based on experiential evidence and as a solution to other logical problems required to allow for some epistemologic systems to remain logically consistent (e.g. as a solution to the problem of evil, for example).

Whether there can ever be direct empirical data which explains the mechanism of free will is unknown. Free will requires additional parameters which make a universe with free will higher order than a universe without it, and thus Occam's Razor potentially applies in cases where free will is axiomatically assumed to have no utility.

This is why I believe that free will implies dualism, though there are other possible places to eventually "find" and potentially empirically test free will, such as extra dimensions, parallel universes, or alternate realities. All of these potential options could provide a means of satisfying the mechanism for dualism and are not currently empirically verifiable.

Answer 3

Yes. But free will is a sub-option of a wider class of options that are neither random (bayesian), nor deterministic.

Basically, it is possible that the most complete physical theory is neither deterministic, nor based on (fixed) bayesian probability.

There are several mathematical theories (such as the Possibility theory and Generalized Information Theory) of uncertain probabilities (such uncertainty is known as Knightian uncertainty).

Basically, an information source that is neither probabilistic, nor deterministic can be viewed as "oracle" or "input port" from outside of the physical world or unknown starting conditions of the universe, or as free will.

So, yes, it is possible that physics is fundamentally neither deterministic, nor probabilistic, but it can be explained not only with free will but also by input from the outside (even by God's intervention or by "the player" for whom our universe is a game).

Interestingly, Thomas Breuer had shown that even if there is no input from the outside of the universe, each observer will see the universe as not being probabilistic (of which being deterministic is a case).

This is because the state of the system where he is properly included can not be fully known to him due to self-reference (even probabilistically). So, there always will be unpredictable events (events with unknown probability). This can be interpreted as free will, of course, but also (as he had shown) as in-principle-unknown initial conditions of the universe (the observer cannot know the present state, so, he cannot know the past or initial state as well). So, such unpredictable events (or unpredictable information) comes either from free will or the force that created our universe or they are basically the same thing.

Answer 4

Upon analyzing the determinism dilemma, I find that one part is false (or incomplete). I agree that all actions are either determined, or undetermined. For the determined actions, "free will" is not present. However, for the undetermined actions, there are at least two types, random and selected. Also, for the random actions, "free will"is not present. But for the selected actions, "free will" is present. This results from the application of "free will" by the selector!