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What sense to make of it

Pfhorrest's comment: I don't even know what sense to make out of this. A determinist puts forth an opinion on a matter of objective fact: "as a matter of fact", he says, "everything, including human action, is determined". A libertarian responds with their opinion on that matter (a matter of objective fact, as previously stated): "no, actually; human action, in fact, is not determined". In proffering a contradictory opinion on the matter (of objective fact) which the determinist opined about, the libertarian puts forth his own opinion on that matter (of objective fact). --Pfhorrest (talk) 11:21, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

→ Pfhorrest: Can you comment upon this imaginary conversation? I say as a libertarianist to the determinist:

"Free will is not determined".

The determinist replies:

"Well then what is "free will" anyway? I think everything "objective" is determined. Apparently you think free will is not. So either "free will" is not objective, is not a matter of fact, which is what I've said already, or you think there are things that are matters of fact that are not determined, that is, things I classify as impossible. You think the Universe contains objective things that are determined (although you haven't said that yet) and objective things that are not. I think there is nothing objective not determined, and I wonder if you can tell me how you arrange to classify "free will" as an objective thing?"

In my opinion the libertarianist (defined in this way, which I do not agree with) is stumped at this point, as there are no acceptable observations nor any other criteria that place free will within the realm of the objective, within the subject matter of science. If "free will" were within the realm of science, after 3 millennia there would be some inkling that the scientific study of "free will" is advancing, and some objective experimental observations to report. The closest we've come to that is Libet's experiments and their successors, and PET imaging of addicted subjects that use subjective reports of intention and correlate them with observation of brain activity. Correlations between subjective reports of intention and observable events is the best we can do, and objective third-party observation of "free will" itself is not feasible. Brews ohare (talk) 16:52, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

This all hinges on your misunderstanding of "objective" as meaning "accessible to science", discussed above.

Nevermind that there are physicalist incompatibilists who usually appeal to quantum indeterminacy as the source of freedom they think enables free will, and there are neurological studies into things like how much does the brain chaotically amplify quantum indeterminacy which apparently operate under this notion of free will. --Pfhorrest (talk) 11:08, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

You say the quote below concurs with your position:

"[Determinism] admits that mechanism is true — that human beings, like the rest of the universe, are entirely subject to and produced by the physical states and laws of the universe — and therefore claims that no one is responsible for anything. The latter [metaphysical libertarianism] denies that mechanism is a true explanation of human action, and therefore responsibility is possible."

Your argument is:

"A much clearer way of phrasing that would be "our wills are not (nomologically) determined, and are thus free"; [This statement and the quote] both imply that determinism/mechanism and free will/responsibility are mutually exclusive, and that the latter is the case rather than the former."

You have somehow adopted the notion that "not determined" and "determined" are two attributes that can be attached to a phenomenon, which must be one or the other. That is fine for distinguishing attributes for sorting particular items, like "cubic" or "not cubic".

But let us consider assertions about the Universe itself. One can say here too that the Universe is determined or it is not determined. Such an assertion is not an exhaustive list of possibilities, however, and any suggestion that it is exhaustive is a false dichotomy inasmuch as it is applied to a diverse population, sortable according to many characteristics. The statement that "the Universe is partly determined and partly not determined" is perfectly understandable, and in fact agrees with everyday experience.

The quote agrees that there is at least part of the Universe governed by mechanism - by physical states and laws of the universe ("laws of the Universe" referring to scientific theories past or future), but says that "[metaphysical libertarianism] denies that mechanism is a true explanation of human action". Now "human action" is part of the Universe, we might agree, so apparently the phenomena governed by "physical states and laws of the Universe" do not exhaust the content of the Universe.

How can this quote support your view that we must choose that the Universe is either deterministic or not deterministic, and must rule out a partition where part of it is one and part the other? Brews ohare (talk) 16:25, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I thought we had already reached an understanding that by "determinism" we mean "nomological determinism" and by that mean that "everything is completely determined by the past and the laws of nature". So if some things are not completely determined by the past and the laws of nature, that's a universe which is "not deterministic". A universe in which human action is not governed by "mechanism" (if understood to mean determinism in that sense) is thus simply a universe which is not deterministic -- even if some things are still partially determined by other things.

A hard determinist says that the universe is determinist, so human action is governed by "mechanism", and that that is an impediment to free will, so we don't have free will. A metaphysical libertarian says, conversely, that we do have free will, and that human action being governed by "mechanism" would be an impediment to that, so it must not be the case, so the universe can't be deterministic. All that last part means is that not everything is wholly determined, which is logically equivalent to saying that some things are not wholly determined -- and that in particular, human action is among such things. --11:08, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Pfhorrest: You might answer that you don't think the argument of libertarianists has merit, but that is what they say. It is both more generous and more accurate to say that libertarianists disagree with determinists, but do have a viable position that the Universe is more complex than the determinists can imagine. Brews ohare (talk) 16:29, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not saying anything about the merits of any position. I think libertarians have as coherent a position as hard determinists do. They just disagree on whether everything is determined, or whether some things, namely the human will, are not. That's not usually beyond the imagination of hard determinists either; they just disagree with it as a matter of fact. And saying that some things are not determined does not mean saying that some things are "not objective" or not subject to empirical investigation or anything like that; the libertarian very well is telling the hard determinist "yes, I am saying that there are some objective things which are not determined. I know you think that's impossible. That is precisely where I disagree with you." --Pfhorrest (talk) 11:08, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Pfhorrest's comment: "I'm a physicalist and empirical realist myself, as I suspect you are as well, so I would argue in my own work that the theist claims of non-empirical objective facts are nonsense. Nevertheless, people do hold that position, and I would dispute an edit to the article on God which tried to say mainstream theists claim God's existence is not a matter of objective fact, just as much as I dispute your suggestions about libertarianism here."

The idea of "non-empirical objective facts" is not simply nonsense but a misuse of definitions of the adjectives "empirical" and "objective". This position is not a viable view of what is going on, but an oxymoron. If your position is that such things have to be mentioned because they are a matter of discussion, that's fine. But libertarianists don't have to be lumped into this ridiculous category. Brews ohare (talk) 17:09, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

An aisde, but this is driving me nuts: it's "libertarians", not "libertarianists".

And I'm not saying that all libertarians fall into that category: there are physicalist libertarians. Physical determinism is a matter that empiricial physics has made claims about; namely, that it is false, things like Bell's Theorem prove it. Libertarians LOVE that and latch on to it. Besides, I'm not the one who brought anything about anything being empirically verifiable or not into this; you started that.

But there are dualistic libertarians as well, and dualists in general, and supernaturalists more broadly than that, who hold that there are objectively true facts about reality which are not in a realm accessible to empirical science. And you are being extremely biased in dismissing them all as espousing utter nonsense. A bias I might share, but nevertheless that's not an appropriate place to write a Wikipedia article from. --Pfhorrest (talk) 11:08, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Pfhorrest: It may be that my mind is inadequately subtle to catch fine distinctions you're making, or it may be that I confuse your statements about different positions as assertions about definitions and logic. At the moment I find that you are both agreeing and disagreeing with me, but I don't know if this is about the meanings of terms or about what are the positions of libertarianists and determinists. Brews ohare (talk) 17:51, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

Pfhorrest: After reading this all over several times I have the idea that for you the determinists, libertarianists, and compatibilists all take the view that "free will" is an item that can be viewed as an objective, empirically verifiable phenomenon, and proceed to argue whether this phenomenon is "determined" or "not determined". Thus the argument begins with a very debatable posit that "free will" is an item that can be viewed as an objective, empirically verifiable phenomenon. I suppose that some of the discussion is then about how "free will" can be defined so the posit is valid. And some of the discussion is about what "determined" means. If these matters are decided, one could go on to the second phase and discuss the evidence, but that never happens because the first phase of the discussion never gets anywhere. Does this description capture your view of the situation? Brews ohare (talk) 18:30, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

"Objective" does not mean "empirically verifiable" in the general use of the word, no matter how much you or I think it should.

My view of the situation is that different parties have different views on what "free will" means. Those parties argue with each other over whose definition tracks the common-language use of the term best. Within each party they then argue about whether whatever the relevant threat to free will is by that definition (determinism, predictability, restraint, coercion, genetic programming, cultural indoctrination, etc) actually obtains in fact or not. Some people in those latter arguments appeal to empirical science to back their positions. Others don't. And that doesn't matter for whether they are "valid" positions in terms of the weight of their inclusion in a wikipedia article. And whether they are "valid" positions in a more substantial sense is not our place to say in a wikipedia article.

It's 3AM and there's pages and pages of shit I haven't attended to yet. I don't have time to spend all day and all night every day arguing about this, I have a full-time job and a life on the weekends. Please try to be as concise as possible and get to the point: what is wrong with the lede as it stands? What needs changing and why? Not just posting your own huge completely different alternative to it with slight modifications over and over again. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE CURRENT LEDE AS IT STANDS AND WHY? --Pfhorrest (talk) 11:08, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to annoy you. The use of a trial balloon as an introduction is only a device to bring about some clarity about the issues involved through an overview. I've suggested below that you limit your comments to Version 4, rather than to the back-and-forth leading to it, which is rather extensive and hopefully has been dealt with in Version 4. Gradually some clarity is happening. Brews ohare (talk) 15:18, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I think you can see that whatever the merits of the article Free will as an academic exercise, it is not clear to a reader like myself, not readable, and not comprehensive. Saying "‘Objective’ does not mean ‘empirically verifiable’" may be helpful to you; it isn't to me. To me, ‘objective’ contrasts with ‘subjective’, and in this context distinguishes between approaches based upon science and those based upon intuitions. This article should not be a repository of arcane argument couched in technical jargon, replete with fine distinctions unclearly demarcated. Brews ohare (talk) 15:26, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Ok, so I think I get that your complaint about the lede is that it is not clear to you. I am open to discussing how to clarify it, but not by introducing biases just to make it more comfortable for your conceptual framework. There is a very real (and in my eye quite plausible) possibility that it is not clear to you because you have a very particular worldview which you are reading the article from in which many positions described simply can't be coherently formulated. That's fine to hold to such a worldview, and to argue elsewhere that other such positions really are incoherent, but it's not fine to write the encyclopedia article from that worldview.

Put yourself, for a moment, in the shoes of a naive metaphysical libertarian, whose concept of "free will" is such that it is obviously, logically contradictory with determinism, and who has no idea that anybody disagree with that. Libertarian-You then comes to this article and reads that free will might be compatible with determinism if certain philosophers are right. In Libertarian-Your mindset, that's nonsense; it's a blatant, obvious logical contradiction for free will to exist in a deterministic universe, as far as Libertarian-You is concerned. What is this article going on about? It must be using the words "free will" and "determinism" in some peculiar way counter to common sense...

The problem is, there is no uncontroversial "common sense" position. Different people naively (i.e. without any education on the matter) come to believe things along the lines of all kinds of different positions listed here. The current balance in the lede was established after the article took incompatibilism to be the "common sense" position and wrote everything from that position, with a note that some crazy people called compatibilists thought that the impossible was possible and you could have deterministic free will. We've had other people come through here insisting that the article needs to just "say what the common sense definition of free will is", all disagreeing with what "the common sense definition" is. That's the problem: any definition of free will is controversial. We have to present this technical disagreement because that's what the consensus of experts in the field stands as.

For a completely non-philosophical example of a similar problem, look at the article on Football, and at the archives of Talk:Football. It's often full of people screaming that "this article should be about FOOTBALL not SOCCER!!!" or "this article should be about FOOTBALL not that AMERICAN crap!!!". But because there are many kinds of sports all locally called "football", the article at that name is about the different kinds of football and their relationships to each other and their history. Which is not what a naive American wanting to read about the NFL or a naive Brit wanting to read about FIFA would want to find at the article called "Football", but it's the only thing encyclopedically appropriate to put there.

Almost all philosophical articles have this problem; what is a right and do such things as "positive rights" or "natural rights" even make any sense to talk about? What is morality, or ethics? People come through those articles all the time saying that we got the definition wrong or that it doesn't say anything or it is confusing... but no definition is uncontroversially right, so we can't say much, and yeah, things are confused even among the experts. That's the state of the subject matter, so inevitably that's going to bleed into the article too. --Pfhorrest (talk) 04:12, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Objective "free will"

Here is a discussion by M. Quack (Physical chemistry boundary conditions of free will) that might prove interesting (there are many omissions here, not all indicated):

"We must first ask what we wish to define as "free will" in an empirical investigation. Here I would distinguish between two possible definitions.

The first, which at least in principle could be investigated empirically, I would call "objective free will". We would empirically grant that an individual had demonstrated "objective free will" in an experimental investigation if we were not able even in principle to predict his decisions, thoughts and resulting actions, for whatever reasons. This does not yet address the question as to whether a person "can help deciding how he does", that is, whether he can be made responsible for them. ... On the other hand, if we could develop an experimental or theoretical procedure with which we could predict all actions of an individual, we would dispute his objective free will. Even if the individual believed that he had decided freely, we would expose this belief as an illusion... It is without question that the hypothesis of "objective free will" defined in this fashion can in principle be tested, at least in the sense of a falsification according to Popper.

If we were to take the extreme viewpoint...that a single radioactive atom is an individual ...which can make decisions of its own free will, then it would empirically have objective free will in the sense defined here, however remarkable that might seem.

This leads us to the idea of subjective free will. This requires more than demanded by the "objective" free will defined above. Our intuitive concept of that which we generally assume in daily life to be ordinary free will can be defined more concisely in terms of the molecular psychology hypothesis. According to this point of view, there could exist an overlying structure, or I, which determines the decision making process in some form form "inside":. but is not predictable from outside. This idea of such an influence by an I would be unproblematic if the decision making process were deterministic and predictable. ...The illusion of free will could be part of the process in our brains, but the free will in the sense of the definition does not exist even as "objective free will": our action would be those of a predictable robot. ... the acceptance of subjective free will contradicts the laws of molecular quantum physics as they are known at present.

In conclusion, we can therefore state three possibilities for the situation of human free will, from the standpoint of the hypothesis of molecular quantum psychology:

1. There is no free will...Our impression that we decide freely is an illusion.
2. There is an "objective free will" but no subjective free will. The decisions are in principle not predictable and statistically undetermined.
3. There is a subjective free will, as we intuitively understand it, namely that a complex overall structure, the individual or the I, makes the decision in a sense that is probably determinable for the individual himself, but not predictable by an external observer. This makes necessary the assumption of the existence of objective free will, and additionally would require a violation of the current laws of molecular quantum physics. The experimental proof of a subjective free will would simultaneously be the proof of a new physics.

To me, this seems like the modern determinist's position. Any comments? Brews ohare (talk) 02:34, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

What Quack calls "objective free will" sounds to be defined as either incompatibilist free will or at least Dennett-style compatibilism (depending on how strongly Quack means "in principle ... predict"). I'm struggling to make sense of what he's even saying about "subjective free will" above and beyond the common subjective perception of willing things freely; what the heck is the "molecular psychology hypothesis"? This guy sounds like his last name is appropriate, and I hope you're not appealing to him as authoritative on defining "objective" and "subjective" free will. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd add a caveat, that the observation of "free will" envisioned here is indirect, by observation of actions attributed (by some convention) to "free will", and not by any attempt to observe directly a mechanism of "free will" by which it "causes" things to happen. Brews ohare (talk) 05:29, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Why are we focusing on the lede?

I've been gone for the weekend and am going to try to slowly respond to the rest of the comments made here as I can find time over the course of the day, but in the meanwhile I want to bring up this suggestion from earlier which seems to have been overlooked:

I think some of the material Brews wants to add would make a useful addition to the article. My only major point of contention is disrupting the very beginning of the lede, wherein, since we have no uncontroversial definition of free will to give (which is supposed to be the first thing you do in any encyclopedia article, define its subject), we must give as brief as possible an overview of how different positions define free will. Brews apparently is trying to find an understanding of that for himself and is not familiar with the established positions on that matter, and has not stated (even when directly asked) what is wrong with that definitional part of the lede as it stands, so I don't think all this thrashing about the definition is going to be constructive at all.

Because of that, I suggested earlier that a more productive course of action than continuing to argue over how to rewrite that very first part of the lede, would be to add two new sections to the very top of the BODY of the article, and two NEW paragraphs at the END of the lede, AFTER what's already there, summarizing these two new sections of the body:

• An Overview section incorporating Brews' earlier additions on the mind-body problem as well as other philosophical implications of the problem of free will (e.g. moral responsibility), and other issues which have implications on the question about free will (e.g. physics issues re determinism, mathematical issues re chaos and complexity, biological, sociological, and psychological issues of how people's brains and minds function, etc).
• A History section giving a chronological overview of the motivating factors for different positions on free will and the back-and-forth between their proponents.

To be clear I'm not saying "hands off the lede!" or anything, I just think that there is a lot of confusion as evidenced here on the talk page and the lede as it stands is already the result of much careful deliberation earlier, so we shouldn't go shoving things into it and destroying that. The above will give a place for Brews to add the new material he wants to add immediately without causing that problem. We can then continue to talk here about possible revisions to the first part of the lede.

Thoughts please? --Pfhorrest (talk) 21:51, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Pfhorrest: I think my Version 4 above describes the topic without treading on any toes. I'd like to know whether that is the case. I'd suggest commenting upon Version 4 rather than the earlier back-and-forth, because Version 4 attempts to address or to bypass the difficulties found earlier.

I view Version 4 as an overview that informs my understanding of the topic. I'd like to know if we agree about this understanding more than whether it makes a good Introduction.

Your program applies to reconstruction of the entire article, and it needs it. That is ambitious, and worthwhile. If we can understand each other, perhaps I can assist in this bigger program without too many missteps. Brews ohare (talk) 22:26, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

If you're just trying to come to an understanding, I think it would be more productive to do it outside the context of proposing a new introduction. Maybe say "This sentence says '____' right now. That seems to mean to mean '_____'. Is that what it's meant to mean? Or does it maybe mean '_____' instead?" That will give us a better idea of where the lack of clarity in the lede as it stands it and how that can be improved to ease readers' understanding, rather than making the focus on all the flaws of your proposed alternatives.

The suggestions for Overview and History sections and new lede paragraphs summarizing them was specifically to give you a space to add materials which are missing from the article now and which you seem eager to add, in a way which would not step on any other toes. My primary concern here has been making sure the definitional part at the start of the lede stays intact and neutral. My edit to it tonight should hopefully help keep it intact (i.e. help keep digressive new material from getting stuck in the middle of what is trying to be as concise as possible a statement of the different contentious definitions of free will) by moving the brief digressions that were already in the middle of it, out of it. I think we still need to continue this discussion to make sure you have a proper grasp of where the lines between different positions are and what points are contentious, so that when you go at it and add all the material I gather you are queuing up, it is done in as neutral a way as possible. But just staying out of the definitional material for now (in edits to the article) will do a lot to assuage my concerns. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Particularly as regards the definition of free will, Version 4 suggests two definitions: the common-sense definition and the philosophical one. The first is the intuitive notion most of us have, and the second is the formalization of this intuition, which unfortunately takes a very convoluted path. Are you OK with this division? Brews ohare (talk) 22:33, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

As discussed a few sections up, any talk about "the common-sense definition" is problematic. There isn't one, different people have wildly different ideas about what is "common sense", and that is the root of all our problems. There is likewise no singular "philosophical one"; there are many philosophical definitions, most of them refinements on what someone or other thought was the common sense definition. All we can really do is write something which is neutral to all those differing "common" senses of free will, informed by the terminology philosophers have developed to distinguish between them. It still needs to be as approachable as possible to the lay reader, and by saying specifically what parts of it are confusing to you you might be able to help with that, but the solution is never going to be to bias the article to what you (or anyone) thinks is "common sense", because someone else will come by later and disagree about that. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

A second point is a more general definition of determinism or "mechanism". I read the lengthy discussion of this point by Nagel Alternative descriptions of physical state , and Version 4 suggests the definition might run something like this:

Determinism is the belief that the Universe is properly described by some combination of verifiable deterministic theories. A theory is defined as deterministic if, and only if, given its state variables for some initial period, the theory logically determines a unique set of values for those variables for any other period.

Do you think this might work? Do you favor some amplification of the definition of "determinism" now in use, that "the present dictates the future entirely and necessarily, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events"? (This statement should be revised to "the past and present dictates the future entirely and necessarily, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events.") Brews ohare (talk) 22:50, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I think there is definitely plenty of room for elaboration on what exactly determinism is, but that first thing in the lede isn't the place to do that. Early in the section on incompatibilism would be more appropriate. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I'd hope that a revised Free will could avoid the description of Vohs & Schooler as "For all the ostensible importance of such a question, the debate has had little or no impact outside of academia." and by Martin Quack as "bringing everything to the point that logically can be brought to the point." I think the important aspect of the topic is less the academic debate and more the recent findings of neuroscience which concern objective limitations, showing that the intuitive notion of free will exaggerates our freedom, regardless of any disputes over hypothetical positions, and provides objective information about addiction, rehabilitation, and other factors affecting free will, useful regardless of the outcomes of disputes over hypothetical positions. Brews ohare (talk) 23:17, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

I personally agree that the latter are more important than any quibbles about determinism, but then I'm a Frankfurtian compatibilist and more generally a pragmatist. Others may not share that bias, and with our encyclopedist hats on we have to respect that. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Pfhorrest I am happy with the lede as is - and am glad that you recognised the problem with discussing determinism in the introduction. I don't mind incorporating structural changes to the article (talk section: Pfhorrest's flowchart). I would like to see "overview" content distributed as relevant to its various forms of free will as you originally suggested (and not in its own root section) Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 06:58, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Richardbrucebaxter: Perhaps you might comment upon the use of two definitions in Free will, namely, the common-sense subjective and intuitive definition and the philosophical one? Although the first is pretty clear, the second apparently is not, taking a simple English formulation like "Free will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints" and then arguing over the meaning of ‘ability’, ‘free’, ‘choice’, ‘certain kinds’, and ‘constraints’, and perhaps most important, what the meaning of ‘is’ is. So perhaps the philosophical definition is best described as taking the intuitive definition and subjecting its various words to analysis? Version 4 above makes an attempt at this. Maybe you have a proposal about how to do this? Brews ohare (talk) 15:58, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't think anyone is arguing against the 'free choice thesis' you have quoted. It might be worth mentioning for that reason - but I don't think this is what is being generally debated by people (including philosophers) when it comes to 'free will'. It could probably fit nicely in the new 'classical compatibilist' section Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 00:10, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Richard: I still intend the bulk of the material on the subjects relevant to different senses of free will to go in their respective sections. Material on nomological determinism would go in the incompatibilist section, material on chaos and complexity would go in the Dennett-et-al section, material on biological, psychological, and cultural determinism would go in the Frankfurt-et-al section, etc. I merely meant the Overview section to summarize the relationship between the question of free will and other questions: both philosophical questions like the mind-body problem and moral responsibility, and other scientific etc questions like the above. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi Pfhorrest - thanks for your explanation. Moral responsibility is a good example of an important issue whose relevance is not dependent upon a given free will model. This particular issue seems attune to other social/scientific issues (eg believing in free will), and may best belong to the science/society section of the new layout. I would however maintain that;

• Nomological determinism is of course relevant only for incompatibilism (other forms of determinism should be discussed in section 1. of the new article layout, along with fate, destiny etc)
• The mind body problem is only strictly relevant to incompatibilism (free will that must assert influence on physical reality and therefore requires mind as distinct from body - which like its historical naming "metaphysical libertarianism" suggests is ignoring the minimum requirements case of incompatibilist free will, ie, a non deterministic system without origination)
• Cognitive disorders/conditioning etc are only strictly relevant to compatibilsm (free will that involves no external influence)
• Neuroscience of free will places restrictions on both compatibilist and incompatibilist models- but this already has its own section
• Intuitive sense of 'free choice' is directly related to classical compatibilism and should be discussed in its respective new section. It therefore does not require its own section; it just must be articulated properly and placed in the context of the existing philosophical framework (a common theme)
• I am not aware of any additional issues that appear to warrant such a section (please let me know regarding this) - but I am not against an overview/expanded introduction in principle.

Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 16:06, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Hi all, just dropped in after seeing this message Pfhorrest posed at WikiProject Philosophy. I agree that the lede as it is could be improved (for example, from my perspective the issue of Free will in theology is currently given short shrift). However, I think Brews ohare's proposed new introduction reads like an essay and takes some unencyclopedic liberties with the subject matter. In particular, the walk-through approach to the topic seems to define the field of inquiry according to one possible investigation, instead of proceeding from general to specific as a lede usually does. It may make for a better essay, but we can't really do that on Wikipedia because everyone would choose to walk through the topic differently. Consequently we have to reach consensus about the core of the topic and work outward.

It also strikes me that this discussion might be facilitated by some literature reviews in the area of free will. This type of thing helps to create meta-perspective (perspective on others' perspectives) which in my experience are very useful for optimizing the lede.

Also, I love the domino image but I think it works better later in the article. I'm not sure about the current image at the top—a quadripartite taxonomy—and my instinct is to be skeptical about the universality of such taxonomies. I guess free will is really hard to illustrate! Salaam, groupuscule (talk) 05:32, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Overview section

Pfhorrest has suggested the following:

add two new sections to the very top of the BODY of the article, and two NEW paragraphs at the END of the lede, AFTER what's already there, summarizing these two new sections of the body:

• An Overview section incorporating Brews' earlier additions on the mind-body problem as well as other philosophical implications of the problem of free will (e.g. moral responsibility), and other issues which have implications on the question about free will (e.g. physics issues re determinism, mathematical issues re chaos and complexity, biological, sociological, and psychological issues of how people's brains and minds function, etc).

Perhaps a draft overview could be presented below? Brews ohare (talk) 16:21, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I would be happy to see that, but are you asking me to present a draft or asking if you should present a draft? I suggested that section mainly because you seem to have a lot of material queued up somewhere that you want to put into the article that doesn't fit neatly anywhere else, so I would suggest you put together a draft overview with that material. Mainly I'm thinking of things like how the mind-body problem relates to free will (which should be moved up into here from where it currently is), and also how neurological and genetic issues relate to it. The latter should be in brief, as it will be elaborated more further down in a subsection of the Frankfurt-et-al section. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

objectively true facts about reality which are not in a realm accessible to empirical science.

Pfhorrest: Your statement that some dualists hold that there are "objectively true facts about reality which are not in a realm accessible to empirical science" strikes me as based upon using "objectively true" in a special way that is tantamount to double-speak. I am quite prepared to say that there are "facts about reality which are not in a realm accessible to empirical science" but it is silly to call them "objectively true". So pain is "subjectively true", and some neurological correlates of pain are scientifically observable and therefore "objectively true". The pain itself remains only subjectively true. Maybe the position is that "pain" might someday be made a technical term in an abstract theory of pain that predicts the observable consequences of pain, and this theoretical concept of "pain" is thereby an "objective fact" at second remove, albeit not equivalent to subjective pain? Brews ohare (talk) 18:22, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

You bring up the following:

"Nevertheless, in the general use of the language outside the circles of verificationism and its descendants, people talk very much about whether or not supernatural and otherwise unverifiable things are in fact real or not, and they are not just expressing their feelings about subjective experiences they each have, they intend to argue about objective facts."

So the idea is that "objectively true facts about reality which are not in a realm accessible to empirical science" are what people talk about when they talk about whether "supernatural and otherwise unverifiable things are in fact real or not". I have no problem with saying these conversation are about real things, only that they are not, as you say, verifiable. If we cannot keep straight that reality and verifiability are separate, we are in big trouble. I think the distinction is mainly between subjective and speculative and publicly demonstrable. Apparently, you suggest that "objectively true facts" that can't be verified are part of the language, so "objectively true" is therefore degraded to zero utility for the discussion here. Is that it? Brews ohare (talk) 18:42, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I think this is a pretty irrelevant sidetrack here because we don't need to use the language "objective facts" in the article anywhere and so can completely sidestep it. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

→ Pfhorrest: I don't think this issue can be sidestepped because it underlies a difference in our views about what the determinist-libertarianist difference of opinion is about. Brews ohare (talk) 17:32, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

But just for your sake: I think the locus of the confusion is your lumping-together of "subjective" and "speculative". Speculative things are things which are not (at least presently) verifiable. Subjective things are things which are not objective, i.e. true for everyone (whether or not they know or can know that truth). Subjective-objective tracks closer to relative-universal than it does to speculative-verifiable. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

→ Pfhorrest: I've no problem with this, other than the suggestion I lump them together. Brews ohare (talk) 14:19, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

→ On second thought, I'm not sure that I agree with all of this, or even understand it. Objective things are " true for everyone (whether or not they know or can know that truth)" strikes me as an impossible situation, probably the source of the religious wars throughout history. "Subjective-objective tracks closer to relative-universal" I just don't grasp. Brews ohare (talk) 17:06, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

For example, we might speculate about whether there is life on Mars without either of us being able to prove the other wrong, yet. But we are arguing about an objective matter; at most one of us is correct. We're not discussing something like "I perceive life on Mars", "well, I don't perceive life on Mars", where both of our perceptions are true of us, but may not be indicative of anything about the world we inhabit together. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

→ Pfhorrest: You suggest that an "objective" matter is one that is right or wrong. It's probably a side issue, but what "right or wrong" means here has been avoided. I'd suggest "scientifically verifiable" as a possible wording. How's that? Secondly, there is no need for a right or wrong division: there may be many possible theories that apply: string theory, the Standard model, electrodynamics, what have you. And they may not disagree in any particular in certain cases. All are "scientifically verifiable" insofar as they describe some of the exact same experiments, although they differ in nonoverlapping areas, and have entirely different logical bases. I think this is not the main point of your argument, which is the difference between the "true of us individually" versus "true of the world", a distinction which I have no disagreement with. Brews ohare (talk) 14:19, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Similarly, two people of different religious persuasions may argue about some detail of some supposed supernatural reality, like say whether people sent to hell ever get a chance to redeem themselves and go to heaven. They, likewise, are not just sharing their subjective experiences which are all equally true for themselves and have no bearing on anyone else; they are asserting things which they think are objectively true, that is, they will say that if you disagree with them then you are wrong, not merely that it's "not true for you" or something; they'll insist that it's true for everyone even if they don't know it yet. But many religious people will not only agree but insist that everything supernatural and theological is completely beyond the reach of science and will never be verifiable; but nevertheless if you believe the wrong thing, you're objectively wrong. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

→ Pfhorrest: "But many religious people will not only agree but insist that everything supernatural and theological is completely beyond the reach of science and will never be verifiable; but nevertheless if you believe the wrong thing, you're objectively wrong."

It is a misuse of language to say that because a group of individuals share a particular belief that escapes any conceivable scientific test, that belief is objective, just because it is a shared belief. If I understand you, you would extend the meaning of objective to include "reality-like" statements of any religion, like the attributes of their supernatural deities. A ghost hunt is based upon a mistaken belief that "ghosts" can be detected and made scientifically verifiable. Beliefs about gods are seldom tested, but "miracles" are invoked to prove their existence. These activities are not in the realm of "scientifically verifiable", and IMO are not objective facts in any sense of the word. Brews ohare (talk) 14:19, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Contrast the moral relativist, who says that there simply is no such thing as really completely objectively right or wrong behavior, there's just different cultures' or individuals' perceptions of some behavior as right or wrong. That is subjective, the way that "I think chocolate tastes great" and "I hate chocolate" are subjective, or if I may be vulgar for a second for the sake of bringing in a pain analogy for you, "I think anal sex hurts" and "I think anal sex feels great". Those aren't disagreements about facts in the objective world, they're just expressing different subjective experiences. If I hate chocolate and say so, I'm not calling you wrong for liking chocolate. Taste in candy is a subjective matter. --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

→ Pfhorrest: So the moral relativist is subjective about "right" and "wrong" not being objective descriptors? Is that the point? I'd debate that one, both regarding particular choices of "right" and "wrong" and the general concepts. You might try to define "right" and "wrong" as what some holy book describes, but that would not achieve anything like scientific verification. This line of thought gets us nowhere, I'm afraid. Brews ohare (talk) 14:19, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

To bring it back to free will, when hard determinists and metaphysical libertarians argue with each other, neither one is just saying something about what their subjective experience is like. Some libertarians will (or have) argued that they very clearly do have free will because they can subjectively perceive it operating, but they take that as a (subjectively) observed premise for an argument that determinism must consequently be objectively false; as in, if you think it's true, you're wrong, even if they can't prove it to you. They're not saying that they have a different subjective experience of free will than the hard determinist; they're saying that the hard determinist is factually incorrect in claiming the universe to be deterministic. The hard determinist likewise isn't simply saying "I don't share your subjective experience of feeling like I freely choose things"; he's saying that since (on whatever grounds he bases his claim) determinism is true, any such subjective experiences must be illusions, and that the metaphysical libertarian is consequently factually incorrect in claiming to have some power to do other than as the past and the laws of nature dictate called "free will". --Pfhorrest (talk) 05:45, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

→ Pfhorrest: To be clear about my stance, I don't think that the philosophical debate is about the qualities of subjective experience of free will "just saying something about what their subjective experience is like". As stated once upon a time in the article and repeated in Version 4: "A second aspect [of free will] concerns demonstration of the existence of free will, its exact nature and definition, aspects long debated in philosophy." I would say that this debate has no testable consequences and so is not in the realm of the "scientifically verifiable". Instead this debate is about terminology and its implications, and that is a legitimate activity, but it is in the same realm as discussing the various meanings of "parallel lines" in geometry. That is, it is an argument about theoretical constructions that may or may not have any real-world implications.

A statement like a "hard determinist is factually incorrect in claiming the universe to be deterministic" is an assertion about nature. Some of the universe appears to be deterministic; that is the part of the Universe described by science. Some scientists are on record as finding this to be an amazing situation, and wonder if they are missing something. ("The miracle of appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand not deserve. We.... hope that it will remain valid for future research, and that it will extend...to our pleasure even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning - Wigner). Some believe it is not really true that science applies to nature, but that it is a mental shorthand used by the limited human brain to organize its observations. (Duhem Theory considered as an economy of thought.) So a metaphysical libertarian can engage in such argument, but it lies outside the "scientifically verifiable". Does a metaphysical libertarian deal with "objectively true facts about reality which are not in a realm accessible to empirical science"? No. Instead of saying "a hard determinist is factually incorrect in claiming the universe to be deterministic" the libertarian should say "a hard determinist is myopic and unimaginative in claiming the universe to be deterministic, and other possibilities should be considered.". Although you disagree with me, I'd say the metaphysical libertarian asserts there is a part of reality that lies outside the "scientifically verifiable". Some of these fall into the hard problem of consciousness. I believe that subjective experiences are real, but are not "scientifically verifiable". I'd avoid calling these experiences "objectively true facts about reality which are not in a realm accessible to empirical science", however.

A statement like "a (subjectively) observed premise for an argument that determinism must consequently be objectively false; as in, if you think it's true, you're wrong, even if they can't prove it to you." is mind-boggling to me. No serious argument can follow this paradigm that places my intuition above not only yours, but above any scientific verifiability. It is an argument for divine revelation.

I do not find anything in your discussion that bears upon the meaning of the statement "objectively true facts about reality which are not in a realm accessible to empirical science". This use of words remains as the reduction of "objectively true facts about reality" to a nonsense phrase that cannot be used in serious discussion.

→ Pfhorrest: I do appreciate your great willingness to engage. In this case we have not connected. Brews ohare (talk) 14:19, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

→ Pfhorrest: In reading over my remarks I am struck with some assertions of mine that need examination. For example, if "a hard determinist is myopic and unimaginative in claiming the universe to be deterministic, and other possibilities should be considered.", how do I argue this point? I want to say that subjective experience like pain is part of reality that lies outside of scientific verifiability, but has correlated neurological effects (at least sometimes) that do lie within the scope of scientific verifiability. Maybe you can help me formulate this position better? Brews ohare (talk) 17:50, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Rather than get bogged down in a point-by-point rebuttal above, let me take a page from your book and start fresh:

Without regards to terminology, there is a distinction to be made between:

• assertions which have one truth value for everyone everywhere, where if two parties disagree on the truth of the assertion, at least one of them is wrong; and
• assertions which have a different truth value for each party making or evaluating that assertion, without any of them necessarily being wrong in disagreeing

For an uncontroversial example of the first, take an assertion of your rest mass. Someone claiming you are 100kg is either correct or incorrect, and whichever one he is, anyone making that assertion is equally correct or incorrect; you cannot be 100kg to me, but 50kg to Richard. You have one universal rest mass. There is one correct answer to the question "What is Brews' rest mass?"

For an uncontroversial example of the second, take the assertion "chocolate tastes good". That may have different truth values to me, you, and Richard. If I say "chocolate tastes good to me" and you say "chocolate is disgusting to me", we might both be right, because we are making statements relative to ourselves. There are either many or no 'correct' answers to the question "Does chocolate taste good?"

As I understand "objective" and "subjective", they distinguish between these two types of matters. For the rest of this post I'm going to keep using the words that way, so please keep this meaning in mind when reading the rest.

Now another issue is a distinction to be made between things which can be publicly demonstrated by empirical science or mathematical logic etc, and things for which there is not such a method of reaching reasoned agreement between different parties. This is the distinction between things which are verifiable, scientific, etc; and things which are speculative, introspective, or based in faith or revelation.

Very reasonable arguments can be made that all subjective things are introspective things of the latter sort (e.g. that we could never perform a test to see if chocolate tastes good to you; only you can know that, by introspection), and that all objective things are verifiable things of the former sort (e.g. that the claim that God exists cannot even in principle be empirically tested, and therefore there is no fact about that matter). But such positions are not uncontroversially baked into the language, and in either case the inverse of those positions don't come for free with them. Many people argue vigorously over whether or not God objectively exists, i.e. exists for everybody and not just in some people's minds. And some people argue that there is no more to the mind than what the brain does and so we can in principle study your brain and objectively tell whether or not chocolate tastes good to you.

I am not saying these positions are right, I'm just saying they're out there, and they assert themselves using the same language you do, and that language itself is neutral to which of you is correct. The verificationist thesis you seem to adhere to, "all objective facts must be verifiable", would be completely redundant and tautological and obvious to everyone if the word "objective" meant "verifiable". The fact that not everyone automatically agrees with that thesis shows that it is not baked right into natural language. (You can make an argument, and very notable people have, that when you really analyze the concepts of objectivity and verifiability you get a certain kind of nonsense if you take one without the other, but that is a particular philosophical position and not a given among all users of natural language).

Anyway, I still think this is mostly irrelevant to a discussion of free will, or at least to defining the main incompatibilist positions:

• Yes, there is (for many people at least) a subjective experience of free will, in addition to whatever objective matters there may be which are argued about between the different parties. This could deserve a mention somewhere in the lede, somehow.
• However, there is not really an argument between anyone on that subjective matter alone; being subjective, there's not much argument to be had, you can just say that you feel free to choose or not, and someone saying they feel otherwise doesn't contradict that.
• There is also no definitional argument between determinists and libertarians on whether the question at hand between them is a subjective or objective matter. They both believe that they have the singular (objectively) correct answer, not just one which is correct for them (subjectively) but maybe isn't correct for others.
• Some of them on both sides think that matter can be decided empirically, or at least appeal to empirical findings to support their arguments. They might be wrong, and those appeals might be invalid, but they still do it and it's not our place as encyclopedists to say authoritatively that they're wrong.
• Others on both sides appeal to speculative, introspective, or revealed things to support their arguments. Nevertheless, the thing they are purporting to be arguing about is what the singular (objective) truth value of some proposition is, not just what its truth value is for them (subjectively). They might be wrong, and those appeals might be invalid, but they still do it and it's not our place as encyclopedists to say authoritatively that they're wrong.
• None of this has any relation to the formulation we seem to agree on of determinists saying "all things are completely determined" and libertarians saying "some things are not completely determined". Both of those are claims of objective (universal, true-for-everyone) facts, and people on both sides have made appeals both to empirically verifiable things, and to speculative, introspective, or revealed things, to try to support their side.

--Pfhorrest (talk) 05:54, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Pfhorrest: There is nothing in your remarks that strikes me as strange or objectionable. As regards the topic here, "the reduction of "objectively true facts about reality" to a nonsense phrase that cannot be used in serious discussion", my reading of your words is that indeed, the reduction to nonsense is the case, and we have to live with that. So, the use of "objective free will" by Martin Quack must be seen as a technical use of "objective" not widely shared.

The "reduction to nonsense" is arguable (i.e. you could make a case for it), sure; and the use of "objective" to mean "verifiable" is technical or at least partisan language, yes.

I suppose that what this means for Free will is that some lengthy circumlocution must be used when Martin's meaning is what one wants? Brews ohare (talk) 17:49, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't see why we'd need a lengthy circumlocution when "verifiable" seems like it would work just fine. --Pfhorrest (talk) 22:44, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Compatibilism or soft determinism? Hard incompatibilism or hard indeterminism?

In light of Brews' recent edit it occurs to me I've been seeing the wrong word written on this chart all along; I've been seeing "hard incompatibilism" where it says "hard indeterminism". In that case, the upper-right square shouldn't say "compatibilism", it should say "soft determinism" (which implies compatibilism, but is not identical to it). Alternately, the top-right could stay "compatibilism", the lower-left square could say "hard incompatibilism" instead, and the columns could be renamed "free will is impossible" and "free will is possible" instead. (The latter has been bugging me for a while the way I was reading the chart, but it wasn't bad enough to really comment on). Either of these two solutions would give us an accurate and consistent chart. Right now it's a bit of a confused mix between two possible charts. I think the latter would be a more useful chart and I will be happy to make one to replace the current one if we want.

Furthermore, the source Brews cited (Robert Hanna (2006). Kant, Science, and Human Nature. Oxford University Press. p. 418. ISBN 0199285543.) defining hard indeterminism seems to mix it up with hard incompatibilism as well, and has an ugly typo in the middle of doing so to boot, which makes me seriously doubt the reliability of that source.

For clarity, using the lettered propositions I used above for brevity (omitting a few not necessary here):

• F = "free will exists"
• D = nomological determinism
• I = incompatibilism = "necessarily if D then not-F"
• M = the mind argument = "necessarily if not-D then not-F"
• C = compatibilism = "possibly F and D" = "not-I" (and therefore "not-H and not-L")
• X = hard incompatibilism = "I and M" (and therefore "necessarily not-F")

In that language:

• soft determinism = "F and D" (and therefore "C")
• hard indeterminism = "M and not-D" (and therefore "not-F")

More verbosely: Soft determinism says that free will exists and that determinism is true; compatibilism merely say that that is metaphysically possible, but doesn't say whether determinism is true or whether free will exists. Similarly, hard indeterminism accepts the "mind argument" that indeterminism is incompatible with free will, accepts indeterminism, and thus rejects free will on that basis; but hard incompatibilism accepts the "mind argument", accepts the incompatibilist thesis too, and doesn't say whether they accept determinism or indeterminism, but concludes that in either case free will is impossible. A hard indeterminist is not necessarily a hard incompatibilist or an incompatibilist at all; he might well say "if the universe was deterministic, we could have free will; but it's not, so we can't", and the first clause there would make him a compatibilist. Without that first clause he would be a hard incompatibilist, however.

The article already mentions hard incompatibilism, which is why I deleted what I misread as a second mention of it (with a confused definition to boot). I could see mentioning hard indeterminism in there somewhere, but for completeness that would also require mentioning the mind argument, and probably soft determinism as well, and that's all getting a bit much for one short part of the lede; I'm hesitant enough just to have hard incompatibilism there in the lede. --Pfhorrest (talk) 04:36, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Given your very extended presentation of positions just above, which despite its length hardly begins to explain them, and covers about four (where Strawson suggest nine, and still doesn't get them all), it is hard to see why a few positions are squeezed tightly into the leading paragraph to the exclusion of all others. What is needed is a real introduction to the topics in the article, not a hugely truncated emphasis on a few favored academic positions. Brews ohare (talk) 16:45, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not particularly attached to keeping any such chart in there, because it is (as its caption says) an oversimplification, and also gives perhaps undue weight to incompatibilist concerns (the relation between determinism and free will). But if there is to be a chart like that, it should be a self-consistent one, not the confused one we had. --Pfhorrest (talk) 21:57, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Pfhorrest I have updated the SVG version of the chart [1] - I thought it was strange that "Hard Incompatibilism" was replaced with "Hard Indeterminism" when the chart design was updated back in Sept 2010 [2]. I purposely kept the chart content identical when I reformatted it from jpg->svg, since it was not my original work.

Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 17:52, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you. :-)

Also, I'm pretty sure "indetermined" should be "undetermined", or to avoid possible ambiguity of that term, maybe just "not determined" -- but I'm pretty sure there is no verb "to indetermine". --Pfhorrest (talk) 21:57, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I recognised that error also - and will correct this now. Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 11:01, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I fail to see any noticeable change in the presentation here. Maybe my browser is failing to update? Brews ohare (talk) 16:03, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I had to load the image separately and then hit reload, then go to the page and reload that, before the updates were visible to me. Something funky with SVGs I think. --Pfhorrest (talk) 21:38, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Two aspects

I believe the intuition of free will is the only reason this topic has arisen, and is the source of popular and continued interest in the topic. So I have made this clear in the introductory two sentences.

My primary point of contention for any of your edits since you came here has been breaking up the flow of a handful of sentences which I just last night grouped together to avoid you accidentally doing that any more, and yet you manage to find a way to do it still. The first sentence ends with "...certain kinds of constraints", which begs for immediately elaboration: what kinds of constraints?. The two sentences which now immediately follow it say what kinds of constraints different parties put forth, completing the first-sentence definition while maintaining neutrality. Before last night there were some small digressions between those three sentences, which kept ballooning into larger and larger digressions, which is why I reorganized those three sentences to be together so that the connection between them would be obvious, but you still seem oblivious to it and keep sticking things in between them which makes it unclear what any of them have to do with each other.

The thing you stuck between them this time may have some merit however, if stuck elsewhere. Yes, there is a subjective perception of free will. We are having a discussion in the section above about what subjective and objective mean and how those bear on free will, so lets work in that section to decide what the appropriate mention of them in this article is.

I also believe the definition should be separated from the discussion of the philosophical aspects, so the launch into determinism should be in a second paragraph separate from the first. Brews ohare (talk) 16:01, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

"The definition" cannot be separated from "the discussion of the philosophical aspects", because there is no singular uncontroversial definition, and the philosophical discussion summarized there is about what different controversial definitions are out there. We could alternately say "The definition of 'free will' is controversial. Proposed definitions include..." but there are parties on Wikipedia who hate that kind of introduction and I sympathize with their criticisms, so instead we say the nigh-insubstantial minimum which is not controversial, and then immediately state what the controversial elaborations on that are. In, short, the philosophical discussion is a necessary part of neutrally defining the topic. --Pfhorrest (talk) 04:47, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

You have arranged that the intuitive definition should not be identified (despite a fine footnote as support, provided to counter your resistance to its existence despite universal agreement that all mankind shares this preconception). You then avoid setting apart the definition and its segue to millennia of philosophical discussion, and instead launch within this paragraph a separate discussion of determinism, claiming on this Talk page that "the philosophical discussion summarized there is about what different controversial definitions are out there." I note here that (i) this added material does not encompass the different philosophical positions but sketches a very few, and (ii) is inadequate as an introduction to such positions, and (iii) it is historically myopic, omitting millennia of activity, and (iv) the article structure is best served with separate paragraphs on each position, as it was before your reversion, not by straitjacketing thumbnail sketches into the leading paragraph defining the topic.

More objections could be raised.

Your omission of the intuitive aspect of free will leaves out the main force leading to its discussion over millennia: the motivating factor behind consideration of free will is this intuitive perception. If we did not have this intuition that is part of everyday experience, the topic of free will possibly never would arise at all, as it hardly is an inevitability of more abstract considerations.

Your dedication to squeezing your own selection of topics into a couple of sentences in the leading paragraph has blinkered simple, clear presentation. Brews ohare (talk) 17:08, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "the intuitive definition" here. If you mean the definition which all people intuitively understand when they say "free will", then you're just pushing the same "common sense definition" line which is almost never workable on philosophical topics; if there was a universally intuitive common sense definition then it likely wouldn't have been an issue in philosophy to begin with. There is this big technical debate largely because people don't just intuitively agree on what free will means. Most people will agree that they sure feel free to choose, but then if you ask "but are you really free?" you immediately get an explosion of issues over what it would mean to be "really free", before even getting to the argument about whether the answer to that question is yes or no.

If you mean the definition of free will as the intuition most people have of having some kind of power of choice (that feeling of freedom most people will agree upon), then I'm not clear what exactly you want said about that in the article. The sentences I insist on being kept together are the ones that elaborate on the claim that free will it the ability to make choices free from something; the next two sentences spell out in brief what different people take that something to be. Are you wanting to say that free will is not necessarily such an ability at all but maybe is some kind of feeling instead? Something like "Free will is the ability (or perception of having the ability) to make choices free from something..."? I could maybe be amenable to trying to work in something like that, to accommodate those positions which disregard the "objective" question entire and just say something about the "subjective" feeling of freedom that people have. But it will be tricky to expand the definition to encompass that while still remaining neutral and without getting so verbose as to be unreadable.

As to the part that I'm wanting to keep together, it is not meant to be, and for readability shouldn't be, a complete enumeration of all positions on free will. It's saying that "free will is freedom from something or other; many people take that something to be this; but others take that something to be something else, for example this, that, or the other thing." Since the first "something" (determinism) is historically so prominent, we then say briefly what major takes on the relationship between it and free will are: the libertarian - hard determinist debate, the hard incompatibilists who say we can't be free either way, and the compatibilists who say we can be free either way.

All the nitty gritty details between those can be fleshed out further down in the article, and don't need to happen right in the lede. It seems strange that you accuse me of launching immediately into too technical a dispute, and then you want to add all kinds of technical details I'm trying to save for later. You seem to want to say "Free will is actually this in our common sense intuition. But then there's a whole bunch of 'academic' crap people are arguing about, like [full details]". I want to say "Free will is a contentious topic: here is a brief overview of the kinds of contentions in play, see below for full details." --Pfhorrest (talk) 23:41, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Pfhorrest: Your expressed concern here is that the “common sense definition is almost never workable on philosophical topics.” I can understand that. but the common sense definition intends to capture the common sense intuition, and the entire philosophical edifice is one of trying to capture this common sense intuition more capably. Identifying an itch doesn't provide an explanation, but it is the motivation for looking into the thing from a medical standpoint. And, like the medical description of the itch, the philosophical "clarification" of free will may be completely incomprehensible to the layman. What I want, if that is more than a rhetorical question here, is simply the approach of the first few lines found here, which are a very close paraphrase of what was there before, but with the addition of the recognition of an intuitive source for the notion of free will.

These lines are not tantamount to saying the intuitive feeling is free will. It just provides the source of the discussion and leads into the more careful examination of it.

I could suggest, at some peril, that this article doesn't explain why we have this feeling, whether it is justified, nor why all the debate and discussion over free will has got exactly nowhere. I recognize that these goals, however prosaic, will continue to escape us for a long time to come. Brews ohare (talk) 00:11, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I am fine with including a discussion somewhere of these factors, especially if you are not pressing for them to be part of the definition (which I might be amenable to but which would be a very tricky problem to solve). However, I am not OK with putting them before what is currently the very beginning of the article, because "Encyclopedia articles should begin with a good definition". When there isn't a single uncontroversial definition, we have to be a little more verbose than "Subject is ____", and say how various notable sources take the subject to be defined. My main point of contention here has been that your edits disrupt the definitional statement which is supposed to begin the article. Much of what you want to add is perfectly appropriate, elsewhere.--Pfhorrest (talk) 02:25, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

→ Pfhorrest: At the moment you have placed the defitnion in the first sentence as:

"Free will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints."

I assume that statement looks after your concern that "Encyclopedia articles should begin with a good definition". From there one is free to take any tack one likes. You will notice that Version 4 is entirely compatible with this as a leading statement. So these remarks do not constitute a failure of Version 4. Brews ohare (talk) 15:29, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

My concern is precisely that I don't think the first sentence by itself is a good enough definition, which is why there are two supplementary sentences immediately following it, and why I've been so concerned about keeping those sentences flowing together. We could put semicolons in place of the periods in that first paragraph to get a proper definitional "sentence", but for readability we have three sentences instead of one really long sentence.

Without the other two sentences, it'd be like like saying "The spleen is an organ which performs a certain function in the body"; that's not a good enough definition of the spleen, we need to say at least generally what kind of function it performs. The problem is that, unlike with the function of a spleen, there is no consensus on what free will is freedom from, so we have to say it's freedom from something, and then give an overview of the different claims about what that something is. If we put one of those somethings in the first sentence it would be biased, but if we just left it at "something" it wouldn't be a good enough definition. If the spleen performed many, many functions, an article on that might need to begin "The spleen is an organ that performs many functions. Some of its more important functions are...", and those two sentences would go together much like the opening sentences we have now do. --Pfhorrest (talk) 00:25, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

In an essay format, yes, it would be good style to open with the concerns motivating the topic about to be explored. But Wikipedia articles are not essays and must conform to a different style.--Pfhorrest (talk) 02:25, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

→ Pfhorrest: The statement; that it is "only motivational" to mention that free will has subjective, intuitionist aspects; is not a valid dismissal of such material from the lead. Most readers aren't drawn here to plunge into the minutiae of Strawson's table. They need some assurance that the discussion is for them; that their assumption that free will is of interest is not mistaken. Brews ohare (talk) 15:29, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I didn't say only motivational, I just paraphrased what you seemed to be saying: that this subjective feeling is why (i.e. it's the motivating reason that) anyone is interested in free will.

→ Beyond catching the readers' attention, the subjective aspect is a bona fide topic in itself, related to the hard problem of consciousness and mental causation. Brews ohare (talk) 15:35, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

And I've been saying that I'm fine with having that discussed somewhere in the article, just that we don't have to cram everything of value right into the first paragraph of the lede. --Pfhorrest (talk) 00:25, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

→ The first sentence, which constitutes the definition of free will, should be followed by some description of the issues that make it interesting. These are easy to present as the conflict of the subjective intuition of free will and personal control over one's acts with the age-old notions of fate, omnipotence of the gods, and more recently, determinism. Concern over these outside controls over our lives are more fundamental than any specific formulation, do not require hard determinism, do not require any particular form of mechanism (not even the general form as described by Nagel), and are part of our evolutionary programming that separates what we can do something about and what we cannot. Brews ohare (talk) 15:56, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

I suggested the History section and a paragraph summarizing it in the lede as a better place for this kind of narrative material. I would be fine putting it as the first body section, and making its summary paragraph the third paragraph in the lede (bumping the "overview"/importance paragraph down to the fourth). Or vice versa, if you think the "overview" section (the one talking about the importance of free will to other issues and the importance of other issues to free will). I might even be amenable to working the current second paragraph into the last paragraph somehow, which would match my proposed order of main body sections, but as written the current second paragraph flows quite naturally from the first so I'm not so sure about that. But what do you think about it? The lede would then have a structure like:

• Free will is something; most people say X, others say A, B, or C. (current first paragraph)
• Free will is important because yadda yadda, and such-and-such is important to the question of free will. (expansion of current last paragraph)
• People started asking about free will back when [...], and have had this kind of back-and-forth since then. (proposed history summary paragraph)
• Prominent positions on the issue are [...] (current second paragraph)

And the body of the article would mirror that, with Overview and History sections added at the top, and most of the current content reorganized as discussed previously into sections on the different definitions, with more detail on the various issues which are important to the question posed by each definition. Thoughts? --Pfhorrest (talk) 02:25, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

→ Pfhorrest: I take this as an invitation to rearrange and rewrite most of the Introduction, but leave the first two paragraphs sacrosanct? Brews ohare (talk) 15:29, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Pretty much yes, that's what I've been trying to get at for a while. I'm fine with a lot of the material you want to add. I'm fine with it being summarized in the lede. I'm just not OK with disrupting the opening definition with such things, or into going into too much detail right in the lede (which is supposed to summarize the rest of the article), or with discussing it in a way that presents one contentious position as uncontroversially correct. I've been inviting you to develop a new section or two adding all the material you are concerned with, and then add a paragraph or two summarizing them to the lede. The order of paragraphs in the lede is not especially important to me now that the three definitional sentences are reorganized into one paragraph now (so long as that definition comes first, of course). --Pfhorrest (talk) 00:25, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

→ Pfhorrest: I'd be willing to engage in such a revision, but I feel the present lead-in paragraph formulates the subject too narrowly and forces any following paragraphs into an awkward relation with the lead. For example, it proposes a particular formulation of determinism that is far too restrictive to include modern science, and so a follow-on paragraph about determinism has to negate the intro to make a wider case. And, of course, the present lead precludes most of the historical discussion before Laplace, which is based upon different ideas of the influences exerted upon free will. It also biases the discussion toward determinism, forcing the following paragraphs into what looks like sidetracks, when they are in fact every bit as important. Brews ohare (talk) 16:45, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

Nature of "determinism"

Richardbrucebaxter: You wrote: "Even if physical law (our best description of nature) were established as deterministic by the scientific community" etc. etc

This line of thought is not relevant to the discussion of the dilemma of determinism. We do not need to wait for some scientists to decide whether the philosophers are on track. These lines of thought are already put to rest by Nagel and by many others. Whatever form you look at, be it string theory or the Standard Model, the contrast is properly between mechanism (for instance, as described by Model-dependent realism) and something else, whatever the metaphysical liberalist might imagine that to be.

I think the arguments regarding an escape for free will by virtue of the role of probability in some scientific theories are antiquated and dismissed today. Would you agree? Brews ohare (talk) 17:20, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Another discussion is by Caruso. A different tack, the observer's role in observation rather than the role of probability, is here. Brews ohare (talk) 18:27, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

The point of mentioning this is to clarify that "physical determinism" (as discussed in the text that follows it) a) is not a universally accepted assumption, and b) its ability to accurately describe nature is subject to experimentation. An example of this is where non-probabilistic models have been discarded when unable to accurately describe the data - the classic example being Newtonian physics with respect to QM specifically (as opposed to relativity). Hidden variable theorems (deterministic QM interpretations) are being significantly constrained by experimentation. I am not certain if a more general analysis of philosophy of science is relevant here - of course philosophical assumptions trump all (but in the search for truth the idea is to make as least number of those as possible, and certainly where the scientific data / best case modelling bears weight to the opposite conclusion).

Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 18:54, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

The critical difference between determinism and every other position is the assertion that the Universe is completely described in principle by scientific theories, even though the "theory of everything" is not yet at hand, while every other position starts from the standpoint that the Universe is not susceptible to such a claim. The negative view has an advantage in that only one exception has to be found to establish determinism as incorrect, while determinism is in the unfortunate position of never being able to establish its claim because there is always more to consider as events move on. It is only opinion at this point in time, but it appears that the existence of subjective events that cannot be accessed by physical investigation but only indirectly through correlated events is one of the exceptional cases sufficient to void determinism as a viable position. Brews ohare (talk) 16:42, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Northoff & Bohr from different approaches suggest that disturbance of observation by the observer places consciousness beyond any establishment of cause-effect in the everyday sense. Duhem places science in the realm of mental constructs forced upon us by limitations of the brain, leaving the world as something else altogether. Popper is close to this view, putting science in a third world, connected to the real world, but not to be confused with it. And the hard problem of consciousness is admitted by all to be insolvable in scientific terms at the moment. I'd say determinism is on the ropes. Brews ohare (talk) 17:55, 10 December 2012 (UTC)

Intro to "In Western philosophy"

I am not entirely happy with this introduction, but something of an introduction is needed. The problem with this version is that it raises a moral dilemma without adequately presenting its source. Brews ohare (talk) 19:47, 8 December 2012 (UTC) I've made some adjustments here; more could be done. Brews ohare (talk) 00:14, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

I have multiple issues with the Western Philosophy introduction (presumably the "outline" section which was being discussed on Talk);

A) Failure to properly represent physical determinism, and/or an implicit unqualified assumption of physical determinism:

1. "role of determinism in how the Universe works"

2. "For example, determinism has yet to resolve"

3. "At least at the moment, it is an exaggeration to think that determinism governs every aspect of reality"

I have corrected this already. Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 17:57, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

→ Perhaps different wording is in order: asking about the role of determinism in how the Universe works is not an endorsement of determinism.

You are correct to say this; the minor ambiguity is product of merging points 1. with 2. and 3. (I was attempting to simplify). I have replaced "and" with "and/or". Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 19:27, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

B) General assumption of incompatibility of choice with physical determinism (which is an incompatibilist position only):

1. "If the world is deterministic, our feeling that we are free to choose an action is simply an illusion"

2. "...perhaps leaving some room for individual choice"

This will have to be corrected very soon. Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 17:57, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

→ This issue is confusing. What does the caveat "if the world is deterministic" mean? I'd take it to mean if the determinist position were true. With this condition, I don't see that this hypothetical stance amounts to an endorsement of this position to the exclusion of others. Brews ohare (talk) 18:16, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

C) The quotation by Roy F Baumeister has nothing to do with physical determinism. It relates to the particulars of a dynamic interacting physical system. All of the psychological concepts/relationships being discussed here are believed to have physical representation. As far as I am aware this is a compatibilist model (ie, compatible with physical determinism) proposed in the scientific (not philosophical) literature. If there is anything incompatibilist about it, then it should be stated;

With this query in mind, a clear statement of the dilemma is as follows:

"The idea of free will, though now rather in disfavor, expressed the popular and philosophical view that behavior reflects the outcome of a struggle between an autonomous, relatively virtuous, possibly spiritual self and the baser forces of external demand and inner cravings. The assumption that two different processes battle it out to determine action has been fundamental in theological views, such as beliefs about the judgment of individual souls based upon whether they choose virtuous or sinful acts. Likewise, it is central to some modern legal judgments that assign punishment not just on the basis of the action and its (criminal) consequences but also on the supposed state of mind of the perpetrator – reserving lesser punishment for crimes committed in mental states...that supposedly reduce the capacity of the nobler part of the self to restrain the wickeder impulses..."

— Roy F Baumeister et al., Free Willpower: A limited resource theory of volition, choice and self-regulation

The above is a moral dilemma, and it stems from a more fundamental debate over the role of determinism in how the Universe works...

I have corrected this already (but its relevance in an outline remains questionable). Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 17:57, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

→ You are right about this; the argument can be made about the dilemma, but this is the wrong quote. Brews ohare (talk) 18:16, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

D) In general, I am not happy with this section; the relevance of this content is questionable, it definitely requires further references, and inaccuracies remain. I recognise the benefit of some kind of synthesis - but this may not be possible given the stark divergence of opinions as outlined in the introduction (or will certainly be difficult to get across in a neutral fashion). This problem was anticipated in my comments above while attempting to ascertain what content people thought relevant for such an "outline" section (Talk section "Why are we focusing on the lede?").

Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 17:57, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

References

→ No doubt some back-and-forth will be necessary to get it right. Brews ohare (talk) 18:16, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

→ I've made a new approach to this section with different quotations and sources. Brews ohare (talk) 18:32, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Gobbledygook?

The article contains these few lines as part of the Intro to Western Philosophy:

"Fundamental debate continues over whether the physical universe is deterministic. Physical models offered at present are both deterministic and indeterministic, and are subject to interpretations of quantum mechanics - which themselves are being constrained by ongoing experimentation.[10] Yet even with physical indeterminism, arguments have been made against the feasibility of incompatibilist free will in that it is difficult to assign Origination (responsibility for "free" indeterministic choices):[11]"

Now, whether or not "physical models" are both deterministic and indeteriministic" is completely irrelevant here, which one could argue is the point of saying all sides are represented in physical models, both deterministic and indeteriministic. So what is the point of dragging in "interpretations" of quantum mechanics "constrained by ongoing experimentation". It contributes nothing to the presentation, and IMO is misleading gobbledygook. For example, if determinism in the philosophical sense is introduced in terms of "physical states" in the sense used by scientists, as done by Nagel for instance, as outlined in the preceding thread, all this evaporates philosophically as well as scientifically. Brews ohare (talk) 16:25, 12 December 2012 (UTC) In addition, the first sentence, presumably the topic sentence for this paragraph, is "Fundamental debate continues over whether the physical universe is deterministic", is quite simply wrong if a fundamental scientific debate is meant. Brews ohare (talk) 16:25, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

• It is problematic to see you editing the article boldly while mistaking this section for goobledygook. Physics and (at its finest detail) Quantum Physics is fundamentally related to Philosophical studies. Physical models are both determinsitic and indeterministic -depending on their design. Quantum Dynamics research and practice (quantum computation, teleportation etc) does challenge determinsitic definitions. See for example a related question here [[3]]. Your refutations are notional and proclaimations of what is "quite simply wrong" is quite simply wrong. There is fundamental debate and physical research challenging this area, it is not static or all done and dusted. Respecting the maturity and sophistication of this article, I believe the right thing to do would be to add a clarify tag. Lisnabreeny (talk) 03:35, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

These remarks are followed by the quote from Russell:

"...the well-known dilemma of determinism. One horn of this dilemma is the argument that if an action was caused or necessitated, then it could not have been done freely, and hence the agent is not responsible for it. The other horn is the argument that if the action was not caused, then it is inexplicable and random, and thus it cannot be attributed to the agent, and hence, again, the agent cannot be responsible for it....Whether we affirm or deny necessity and determinism, it is impossible to make any coherent sense of moral freedom and responsibility."

This quote is completely understandable on its own. The lead-in to the quote "Yet even with physical indeterminism, arguments have been made against the feasibility of incompatibilist free will in that it is difficult to assign Origination (responsibility for "free" indeterministic choices)" is no help to the reader and does not add to the understanding of the quote, but instead confuses by dragging in "Origination" and "free indeterministic choices", again with no proper basis laid, just gobbledygook. Brews ohare (talk) 16:25, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Finding one or two authors who claim physical determinism cannot be commented on by physics does not invalidate the encyclopaedic worth of declaring current efforts to test the feasibility of deterministic/indeterministic interpretations of quantum mechanics (interpretations as discussed universally by contemporary authors on free will, irrespective of their position).

Origination is a fundamental argument as made against incompatibilist free will (second to determinism), and is discussed prominently in this article. In fact, failure to mention this would be gross negligence in omitting such a biased quotation for no reason (other than the fact you appear to agree with it).

Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 14:59, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

A paragraph that belongs elsewhere

The last paragraph of the Intro to Western Philosophy reads:

"They have even left open the possibility of a "second anomaly" (free will), given that "consciousness manages to exist, in spite of the fact that from a material standpoint it should not". Although incompatibilist metaphysical libertarianism generally represents the bulk of non-materialist constructions,[6] including the popular claim of being able to consciously veto an action or competing desire,[16][17] compatibilist theories have been developed based on identity dualism in which "the experience of conscious free will is the first-person perspective of the neural correlates of choosing".[18] It is however apparent that even the material representation of "consciousness plays a far smaller role in human life than Western culture has tended to believe."[19]

Whatever can be said about the intelligibility of this paragraph, it doesn't belong in the Intro, but in the detailed argumentation later on where the details are presented. IMO this paragraph has been introduced here because Richard is unhappy with the simple formulation of the Intro and wants to plunge into caveats and distinctions here lest the reader somehow be misled into thinking there is something simple to be said. Brews ohare (talk) 16:50, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

If you care to read the source (Schooler/Vohs), all content here is related to the quotation you have made above it. (Except for the last sentence, which you wrote, and I have maintained out of courtesy). In fact the omission of the free will positions it relates to would fail to represent the source. It also provides an opportunity for mentioning a rather prominent philosophical position on free will (metaphysical libertarianism), and in its right context.

Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 14:33, 13 December 2012 (UTC)