Peter van Inwagen - Mysteries of Free Will

Our human sense is that our will is fully free. Our scientific sense is that every action is determined by a prior action. Free will versus determinism is a big question without clear answer. What follows from free will affects morality, responsibility, judgment, even the deep nature of consciousness.

Peter van Inwagen is an American analytic philosopher and the John Cardinal O’Hara Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He earned his PhD from the University of Rochester under the direction of Richard Taylor and Keith Lehrer.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[tonydg]

The fallacy with determinists’ position that the criminal act is predetermined is that they also don’t take the position that so is the punishment. If we can then change our minds to not hold criminals responsible, isn’t that an exercise of free will?

[landspide]

Free will is derived from randomness. It is a moot argument, as it requires the ability to predict the almost infinite complexity and permutations of the generator of random numbers. Realistically impossible, nothing is deterministic at the quantum level.

[T_J_]

To some people, being able to say that "somebody did something wrong" is more important than the truth.

[bigsmoke]

Van Inwagen is my favourite guest on this show.
too bad there isn't a recent talk with him.

[quantumkath]

Peter van Inwagen stated something interesting, "I'm not clear that we hold people responsible for things that they do. I'm inclined to think we hold them responsible for the consequences of things they do, and that makes the difference."

It's funny how we don't question our everyday acts that we all hope we are accountable for, but only if there's moral judgment. We are free to act but don't act immorally.

I can't stop but hold that previous events we have no control over (because we cannot change the past) determine our everyday acts, morally or otherwise.

[richardharvey]

Hi Closer To Truth, sitting here listening my mind wanders as per usual!, I have always found it very difficult to just listen to any other person, I can still hear what they are saying but I just cannot stop my own mind from doing its own thing!.
This particular topic has always intrigued me because I suspect a fundamental paradox. This is related to the concept that all and every aspect of the physical universe we inhabit is regulated according to utterly consistent and unvarying 'laws', these by definition forbid any dis-obedience!, we simply cannot choose to just ignore gravity so those freedoms are denied!. With them off the agenda exactly what freedom are we even talking about, is it just the freedom to change our choice of concepts and methods does it mean we are free to opt for whatever cognitive delusion we select because it 'fits' our desires and ideology, this implies that those choices have zero consequence, that they have no direct material effect on anything outwith our own mental and emotional orbit. The other-wise being that if there are 'real consequences our freedom of expression is regulated by those consequences.
On that basis I have no problem at all with the concept of free will but it does leave it entirely within the realm of imagination and delusion, art if you like but no science!.
Cheers, Richard.

[Dr.CandanEsin]

Listening to philosophers and theologists it comes to my mind that; creator of universe probably didn't expect a genus called human will come up and eventually have a mathematical and probabilistic thinking capacity to decide against odds from spontaneous effects she/he will face before leaving home.

[kathyorourke]

Time only allows for one outcome. That seems as though we don’t have choices.

[zurc_bot]

Dear Robert, would you please consider speaking to Robert Sapolsky about his issue? it would be an interesting conversation.

[tom-kzpb]

Randomness and lack of predictability in brain functions do not represent "freedom". It merely adds an element of caprice to the functioning of a neural mechanism. There is no separate "you" that is free of your own brain mechanisms. Your brain mechanisms ARE '"you". The mechanism behaves as a combination analogous to the winding of a clock, plus the rolling of dice.

[longcastle]

Starting a discussion of free will from a moral perspective is mostly unproductive and confuses the issue, imo, because the ability to make choices from the options available to one (which is how I define free will), was not introduced into the animal kingdom because of moral concerns, but for practical concerns often having to do with adaptation and survival: which particular animal in a herd to hunt, deciding the safest place to camp for the night, a bird deciding which male she wishes to mate with, etc. Only much later in the evolution of Homo sapiens, especially as they began living in larger groups and communities, did the understanding that individuals have the ability to make choices start being applied systematically to issues of guilt and culpability. Starting with the latecomers of guilt and culpability, then, confuses the issue, I think, of what free will is and was originally, evolutionarily speaking, selected for.

[JoelTGM]

What if you take your human lens off and see only the building blocks of the universe moving and interacting. Is the human brain really so special? Maybe I'm typing this right now because of the experiences I've had thus far, and because my brain was formed in it's own particular way with it's own unique traits. Did I choose to say this or has it just come to this? The fact you were even born to be able to ponder all of this was not even your choice.

[mykrahmaan]

If source of all evil is traceable to substances inside the earth and we know the mechanism how to prevent that substance reaching the surface to harm any being, then associating FREEWILL with PUNISHABILITY would become completely superfluous as nobody could ever be blamed for any evil. Then freewill would still be necessary to perpetuate happiness, while PREVENTION OF EVIL would have 100% deterministic formulae that are always particle physically implementable.

[SRAVALM]

Of the many discussions of freewill here on CTT, still, i haven't seen anybody mention or inquiry Intellect.
This is madness.

[AfsanaAmerica]

If we didn't have free will then we would all be the same but we are all different and we make different life choices. Even if someone copied everything a person does there would still be a big difference in their identities.

[TheTroofSayer]

At 1:57 Peter van Inwagen clarifies that the freewill debate is grounded in terms of compatibilism versus incompatibilism, where free will is either compatible or incompatible with determinism. Determinism usually implies bottom-up causation (materialism), exclusively. And in this context, freewill is *incompatible* with determinism.
But there is another direction of causation, that of top-down. Culture is an example of top-down causation. Top-down causation implies context, & choices made in terms of contingency & the options that avail themselves. In this sense, freewill is directly relevant & compatible, because choices are made in anticipation of objectives & what one wants to become.
Bill Gates, for example, began life as a computer programmer who, through astute decisions engaged with the top-down of cultural developments in technology, along with the top-down of parental guidance & support, to become the success he is known for. That's freewill at work, and Microsoft couldn't have happened without it.
Top-down causation is what is missing from the contemporary life-science narrative. It is semiotic, and it provides solutions to problems such as entropy and the mind-body problem.

[monkerud]

we do we not think it is natural to say that a person created an idea, instead of had one. we view ideas as more similar to catching a cold because they are not constructed in a process transparent to us with intention, that kind of a thing would not even make sense, not in the final form, something has to come from outside experience and enter into it for new ideas to be come upon.

[johnmanuel]

Pre determinism is a fallacy if compare to free will.
Past cannot be changed as already determined.
Free will only affect the present and the future as it constantly changing pre determination is also constantly changing.

[monkerud]

the argument does presuppose an understanding of what it means for A to choose to shot B by means of counterfactual. so i don't see what is added here tbh:) you assume there is such a thing as choice that can be judged to be a criteria for responsibility, i'm not sure what to do with that, it is seemingly just assumed with no reference to a manipulator. what causes A to shoot B when the manipulator does nothing? you can't just leave that question out of the analysis, surely isn't a strong enough qualifier to wave that question away. morality, right and wrong is something we perceive and act upon whatever the causes of it, but the understanding of the meaning responsibility or the origin of the contemplation and results in action are hidden from view, we easily just fall back on the intuition of the self containment and obviousness of this choice and the resultant actions belonging to the person A, but upon examination i would still have to say that no progress has been made to ascertain the meaning of responsibility outside the intuitive obvious sense of our intuitions. what was the cause of the understanding and the contemplation, the possible doubt in the thought process, the trigger for the change in experience corresponding with the process leading to pulling the trigger, we find no firm ground floor there, only correlation from which we can reasonably assume risk associated with a person contemplating murder or promoting their intent to do so, but the meaning of responsibility is still not there, the experience of responsibility seems obvious, and actionable, but the origins of the situation in which we find ourselves as who we are seem not to have that character at all removed from the intuition. what this example seems to make obvious is that the internal process of experience, of contemplation, judgement and hesitation with respect to effecting other living beings as we see them, is responsible for actions, and that might very well be true in a certain sense, but the experience is not something that is itself chosen in the same obvious way, there is no obvious secondary or tertiary process of choosing how we feel about choosing, of structuring our own attitudes at will or our impressions in some experience free of the same structure, ultimately these impressions and experiences has to be something structured by something hidden and not percived and so our degree of control over them is not only unknown but is not entering into our intuitions at all, therefore we face a choice of accepting that our impressions and experiences are what and who we are and that from which responsibility derives or we have to say that we do no spring forth from ourselves and there was a manipulator with no such features behind the curtain all along in both cases, the first option doesn't make much sense because we do not choose our attitudes and impressions in the moment they choose for us and that is how we identitfy ourselves in any given experience, but that is not enough to account for why we feel as we do and act as we do, all we can identify there is a feeling of responsibility, and that feeling might be a good thing in the process of choice as it is as the result of the unknown sub strait, giving rise to the experience of responsibility and correlation in action, but as a cause being unfelt and un-judged by ourselves of ourselves. that is to say, even if responsibility is something of a concept hanging in mid air resting not on causation but on intuition it is a good thing to feel and to act upon for whatever reason, it is there and is correlated with action even if we cannot trace any control over it, for better or worse responsibility has to be viewed as a kind of causal influence that runs through us, not that is held by us. it is somethign we feel or do not feel, something we act upon or do not act upon. it is not something we generate on our own.

[AAA-ww]

Most important question.

Free will as free will, there is none. 

Yet are you not responsible? Yes you are. Are you responsible for all or partially? Not known.

What is the journal of one's journey?

So if humans have free will, not to have free will, then they have free will. © 


Metaphysician philosopher