i hesitate to make broad statements here,
I’d have
to say, “free-will is not only not justifiable as a necessity, it is
logically incoherent” was a very broad statement.
but
some seem to be suggesting that nobody is arguing that a human decision is free
from all previous influences. i think this is a fair statement.
Nope, that is not a fair statement, we don’t
have to be “free of all previous influences” to have free will. Free will is a matter
of whether we have the cognitive ability to conceive of future courses of
action, deliberate about various reasons for choosing among them, determine our
actions on the basis of such deliberation, and control our actions despite the
presence of competing desires. If we can exercise these cognitive abilities to
act without our freedom to act being negated or unreasonably compromised by
deterministic external pressure, then we possess free will and human beings are
morally responsible causal agents.
the
best attempts at explaining free-will seem to suggest that there is some kind
of influence-gap. that is to say, it has been suggested that a human decision
is influenced up to some unknown point less than 100% and then there is some
i-gap of unspecified quantity and free-will lives there spreading magic fairy
dust, however small or improbable that i-gap might be. i have never heard
anyone propose a way to measure this i-gap in order to perhaps somehow gauge
how much free-will someone might have, or to figure out if children have it,
and if not, when do they get it? the i-gap sounds to me more like an
ignorance-of-influence gap (this would also seem like the compatibilist's
opinion). if this is the case we should be able to dial up free-will by dialing
up ignorance.
The
attempt to deny the self-evident experiential reality of human consciousness
and the associated fact that we are morally responsible causal agents is a very
extraordinary claim and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Magic fairy dust and the unfounded and completely faith-based belief in
determinism doesn’t constitute extraordinary evidence by any stretch of the
imagination.
the main
problems i see with this proposal are as follows:
1)
there is no way to measure the influence-gap. it is in all likelihood merely a
knowledge-of-influence-gap or lack-of-precision-gap.
Or we could recognize
that this contrived I-Gap argument presupposes
determinism without establishing determinism as a fact, and then recognize that determinism is not
a conclusion of science. On the contrary, since Laplace developed the concept
in a thought experiment 200 years ago, there has been no actual scientific
evidence that reality is deterministic, and a boatload of evidence that it is
not. Determinism requires
the causal closure of the material world, science has not even come close to
establishing the causal closure of the material world and pretty much has
abandoned any further attempts to do so. The 200 year old idea that Newtonian physics translates into a
mechanistic and deterministic model of the universe was never demonstrated, and
that idea became even more unfounded when Newtoniam Mechanics was replaced by Relativity Theory and Quantum Mechanics, currently our two best scientific models..
The strictly philosophical doctrine of determinism is nothing more than an
archaic and failed concept that is in fact, unscientific.
2) even
if the influence-gap is considered to be a real thing, wouldn't that gap simply
increase the value of the other influences? how could the influence gap
possibly be considered an influence? it's a gap that is by definition
non-influential.
3)
let's consider based on at least a small shred of logic, what could be in that
pesky i-gap that might actually be an influence. well, whatever is in that
i-gap can't be influenced since it is inside something defined as an
influence-gap. so maybe there's an uninfluenced-influence in that i-gap; we
could call it something mysterious like, an uncaused-cause, or maybe a first-cause,
or better yet ex-nihilo. could that uncaused-cause be influenced or originated
by anything at all? no, of course not because it's in the i-gap and it is
defined as being uncaused. so could a human take credit for a decision or
action that emerged from the i-gap? how could they possibly take credit or be
responsible for something they had no conceivable control over? anything
emerging from the i-gap would be indistinguishable from a random event. and
randomness is incompatible with choice.
4) but
what if it's the essence of "me" that is in the i-gap. are you
kidding me?! i don't care if it's your grandmother, your dead child, or your
ever lovin' god. if you put them in the i-gap they are at-best
indistinguishable from random noise and at worst non-existent.
5) what
if the gap is not an influence-gap but instead a black box? if the gap is not
an influence-gap, there is no place for mr. free-will to spread his magic fairy
dust because the gap instantly fills with influence and is then no longer properly
described as a gap. additionally if the output of the i-gap is non-random, that
is to say it emits some identifiable pattern, then whatever is happening in the
i-gap must have some way of knowing what the hell is going on outside of the
i-gap and this knowledge is definitely influencing its output thereby
introducing influence into the i-gap which would then promptly disappear in a
cute little puff of logic.
i think
it's important to fully comprehend this influence-gap.
Actually,
not so much, it is a contrived concept that has no basis in logic, science, or
reason. All we really need to know about it is that
it obfuscates the issue by referring to some kind of gap between a presumed determinism
and free will. Presuming the truth of an
idea that has not been established is not a valid argument, and focusing on some contrived gap is nothing but a diversion.
imagine,
if you will, that i am constructing a human being. when the recipe calls for me
to add "a dash of free-will" i can't just add any old thing, willy
nilly; i have to first construct a proper influence-gap to protect my human
from the evil determinism. this would be some container that is impervious to
all conceivable influence. i probably have a sound-proof, shock-proof, opaque,
air-tight, empathy-proof, magic-proof, momentum-proof, time-proof capsule of
some sort just laying around my house, i'll just set that to the side for now.
ok, adding an empty box to the mix isn't going to do anything of course so we
have to put something in it. since whatever is in this i-gap is supposed to
advise me on important moral decisions my selection is of critical importance.
well, the most intelligent and moral person i know of is my friend george, so
since i don't seem to have a better option, i throw george in the i-capsule and
seal him in tight. now days, weeks, and months have gone by and i've pretty
much forgotten about george until one afternoon i am confronted with an
intractable dilemma. i am faced with a decision with staggeringly profound
moral implications and i must make a decision immediately. what do i do? well
this sounds like a case for the magnificent george! so i locate my everything-proof
capsule on which i have scrawled the descriptive term "i-gap" with my
handy wax pencil, and i ask my question. i exhaustively explain all of the
known factors leading up to and logical implications of this monumental
decision to george, my moral, spiritual and financial advisor, and then i wait
for an answer, any answer at all. nothing happens. things are getting
desperate, so i beg george to give me an answer, to point me in the right
direction. nothing happens. i light some candles and wave a magic wand over the
i-gap, but still i can't divine any response from george. i realize there is a
problem with the i-gap's design. so i quickly scour my garage for spare parts
and retrofit a one way intercom system onto the i-gap so i can hear what george
has to say. mind you he still can't hear anything or in any way perceive
anything that i have to say, thus preserving the integrity of the
influence-gap, but now he can speak directly to me, thus becoming an
uncaused-cause. of course george has causes, he was born and raised and had
both happy and sad experiences, but i'll just ignore all that for now. george
is pretty much an uncaused-cause now that he is housed in the exclusive and
luxurious, new and improved i-gap. so i ask george again to answer my plea for
guidance. nothing happens. every once in a while george does actually say
something but it's usually along the lines of "let me out of this f#cking
box you god#amned muth#rf#cking muth#rf#cker!" heh, that george is such a
kidder!
Better
yet, imagine, if you will, that you are constructing an argument against free will
in which logic and reason are backed up by evidence, which is to say, lets make
it about science, rather than fairy dust.
This is no small task because science provides
the strongest argument for free will. The most obvious argument for
the existence of free will is that we all observe it during every conscious
moment, it is a fundamental and significant part of our experiential reality at
all times, hence it is self-evident. Consequently, the denial
of free will is necessarily a rejection of the very concept of empirical
evidence, and the argument against Free Will becomes a rejection without
“proof”, which eliminates induction as valid. These two aspects of the approach
clearly reject the very basis of science and scientific knowledge, leaving
nothing but detached abstractions that have nothing whatsoever to do with the
real world.
Philosophically, the very concepts of logic, reason, and the existence of arguments, presupposes conscious agents that posses free will.
Consequently the argument against
Free Will is completely abstract and invalidates both perception and doing, it is
a complete rejection of science as valid, and philosophically it amounts to a rejection of the very basis
of logic, reason, and truth.
In the end, there is no valid
basis upon which the rejection of Free Will can be said to be true of reality.
obviously
george is constrained by the parameters of his confinement and is therefore
incapable of offering any advice that would be requested from him.
the
same would be true if you put jesus, or krishna, or a unicorn, or any
conceivable entity or event in the modified i-gap.
Nope it’s
still an incoherent argument, even if you include unicorns.
ipso-facto,
no free-will.
Ipso-fact, you have not presented a logical argument
against free will.
