Talk:Free will/Archive-to-Sept-2006

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The use of "we"

I have found the following quote from the Wikipedia Manuel of Style can save a lot of painful circumlocution:

Nevertheless, it might sometimes be appropriate to use "we" or "one" when referring to an experience that anyone, any reader, would be expected to have, such as general perceptual experiences. For example, although it might be best to write, "When most people open their eyes, they see something", it is still legitimate to write, "When we open our eyes, we see something", and it is certainly better than using the passive voice: "When the eyes are opened, something is seen."

Rick Norwood 22:24, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Here are some of the circumlocutions introduced into the article recently:

"Thus the corporate self is argued to be able to be rewarded and punished legally, whether as a business or a living being."

"Libet himself states in one of his books [1] however, does not interpret his experiment as evidence of the inefficacy of conscious free will — he points out that although the tendency to press a button may be building up for 500 milliseconds, the conscious will retains a right to veto that action in the last few milliseconds."

"It seems inconceivable that a combination of random reactions, such as under quantum mechanics, and mechanistic movements of particles could give rise to a "force" which could then freely, without the restraint of natural laws, influence other particles in the brain. This paradox continues to dominate the modern debate over the existence of free will. Further ideas about free will include the uncertainty of quantum mechanics as an agent of free will."

I will only point out that it is not quantum mechanics that is uncertain. Rick Norwood 23:20, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

It is the uncertainty [principle], and all the other quirks [that is part] of quantum mechanics, not that the quantum mechanics is uncertain. An ambiguous statement, not a mistaken one. The particles in the quantum mechanical system are uncertain, as well as potential reactions. Elle vécut heureuse à jamais (Be eudaimonic!) 10:59, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

My point is that this edit has introduced several such ambiguities, and will need to be rewritten. Rick Norwood 14:15, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Since the previous editor seems to be done, I am going to try to fix the "ambiguities", but I must say that editors should work carefully, and not rely on other editors to clean up any "ambiguities" they create. Rick Norwood 21:24, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

"Sole" originating cause

The second paragraph of the determinism versus indeterminism section makes a meal out of the alleged commitment incompatibilists have to the agent being the "sole originating cause" of an action. This gives rise to a "problem" for incompatibilists that seems to me a false dilemma. To quote:

In the case that the past conditions, but does not determine potential responses, this creates problems with the stipulation that the agent be the sole originating cause of the free act. Individual choices would be just one outcome amongst multiple possibilities, all of which are ultimately determined by the past; even if the agent arguably exerts the will freely in choosing amongst the available options, they are not the sole originating cause of the action.

Now, as I understand it, the important point for indeterminism is that a free action is unlike a caused action, not that a free action is somehow off in its own little universe (that is even an liberatarian could acknowledge that an agent might do what had worked in the past — the point is that they genuinely could have chosen otherwise, not that there are absolutely no other factors besides the will &mdash such factors, however, are only relevant as they are taken up by the will). The difficulty here seems to be a simple linguistic confusion: first "conditions" is differentiated from "determines" but then taken to mean "determines certain absolute restrictions without eliminating all choices", which it need not, and in this case, clearly does not, mean. Personally, I would favor getting rid of this "sole" originating cause language if it really gives rise to this confusion. Ig0774 10:51, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I wondered about this also, but my understanding of the paragraph is that agency theory goes beyond mere indeterminism, and would claim, for example, that people choose to be homosexual, or criminal, or Christian without any influence on their choice other than that they choose it. At least, this is what the current article claims that "agency theory" states. I don't know anything about "agency theory" except what I read in Wikipedia. Rick Norwood 14:39, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

A split-off of the Theology section, and other notes.

Rick has done some good work trying to shorten the article, something which I wish was easier earlier at Wikipedia. The work could probably be even more significant, though. I was thinking that one way to get the article down to size more would be to spin-off the Free Will in Theology section to its own main article, and leave a recap in this article. Would that seem reasonable?

Speaking of sections, the "Free Will in Fiction" section is woefully short and kinda bad, but I didn't have time for a good replacement, and removing it would probably merely insure a Matrix reference got added back in the middle of the article by fanboys reading it who wanted to introduce it. Probably a short list would work here; something along the lines of "Free Will is a popular topic in many fictional works, especially science fiction novels. Examples include The Matrix, the Twilight Zone, etc. etc...." Maybe include a reference that most works seem to come down on the "free will" side, although there are a few that go the other way, but that'd be an unresearched hunch just based on my experience.

As for a few of the minor edits- Go is traditionally capitalized, and no, I don't know why. Also, chess has infinitely many games, so it's fair to mention infinite possibilities, even if some of those games are really stupid (why am I marching my knight around in circles?!). I also switched believed to believe: The subject of the sentence is "some scientific determinists" not Einstein, and there are some still around (even if they're probably wrong, as I noted). So present tense.

HGilbert, the Laplace refutation still feels very artificial, although I can see that you have a point. Part of the problem is the length of the article- I'd have removed the comment if you'd get to the science section shortly, but it's entirely possible people will never get to it, and you have a point that it's fair to warn that Laplace is scientifically out-of-date, if not philosophically. It just feels like a swing better suited for the sections beneath that have the arguments & counter-arguments, while that section is more setting out definitions. Anyone have any good ideas on how to do this?

My feeling about Go was that if chess isn't capitalized...but I see now why it is better to capitalize Go -- otherwise it looks like "go".
I'm all in favor of splitting off "Religious views of free will".
I'll try to fix up the "free will in fiction" section. It should certainly mention "All the Myriad Ways" by Larry Niven.
No, sorry, there are not infinitely many possible chess games. If fifty moves go by without a piece being taken or a pawn advanced, the game is a draw. Therefore an upper bound on the number of chess games is (14 + 8 + 14 + 8 + 28 +14 + 8 + 14 + 8*48)^(50*8) or approximately 2 to the power 3900. This assumes that no piece is ever blocked and all pawns become queens. If we estimate the lifetime of the universe to be 10^23 years (why not) and take one universe lifespan (ul) as our unit of measurement, then we can play every possible game of chess in less than 2 to the 4000 power uls.
I think that the idea that the universe is stochastic rather than deterministic is important. Rick Norwood 22:20, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Point granted on chess. I'd forgotten that rule. Oh well, not the perfect example then... I still like the idea of invoking infinity, though, since there are plenty of games that are theoretically unbounded, although chess is famous enough that it should really stay.
As for faith, I'm actually having second thoughts on splitting that (not saying I won't, but waiting a bit more). I do think that I will shortly revise the recently addedsection on Buddishm- it seems very cheerleadery, and massively violates the "no 1st person" harangue given to this article earlier. SnowFire 21:58, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Free will leads to?

I can't remember but I remember reading somewhere that free will leads to disobedience and that a completely non-violent world is impossible to achieve as long as you allow creativity, can anyone confirm this?. 213.89.67.167 17:08, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

First off, this might not be the best place to post general forum type questions. I'm sure there are some philosophy discussion boards out there you can find. Secondly, please don't delete others' commentary; I've restored Rick Norwood's comments to as they were before.
Anyway. That said, your question isn't really relevant to this topic. Creativity can exist in a world without "free will" as well as one with, ignoring for a moment the many definitions of free will. If you just mean free choice, "impossible" is clearly false- what if everyone chose to not be violent (whatever "a completely non-violent world" means)? That said, it's clearly very unlikely that everyone would choose in such a way. I'm not sure quite what you're getting at, in any case- whether "a completely non-violent world" is possible under such circumstances doesn't really have anything to do with whether free will is true or not, and is clearly possible under worlds both with and without free will. SnowFire 21:58, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Rick Norwood 22:27, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
Amen to that XSpaceyx 15:02, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Miscellaneous Comments

  • Introduction: "Such a belief has been supported as important to moral judgment by many religious authorities and criticized as a form of individualist ideology by writers such as Spinoza and Karl Marx." Does the first one need to be qualified with "by many religious authorities"? One could equally well insert "by many philosophers" or simply "by many people". Since neither Spinoza nor Marx (who have quite idiosyncratic takes on this question) are discussed on this page, is it really appropriate to mention them?
  • Agency Theory: I know next to nothing about economics, but could someone kindly explain to me how the notion of "agency theory" mentioned on this page ties into the page it links to and if, as I strongly suspect, it doesn't, where does this term come from?
  • Determinism versus indeterminism: Since we added a nice section of defintions immediately above, do we need to keep the summaries of determinism and indeterminism in this section? In fact, it strikes me that this section may need to be reorganized/rewritten. For example, the paragraph on Schiller and the one offering an "intermediate view" seem quite like they were interjected into the middle of the section. And then there is the quite unclear discussion of compatibilism — there are decent arguments for compatibilism and some of them are hidden in those paragraphs, but they could be stated a bit more clearly.
  • Moral Responsibility: Why are hard determinists posited as being opposed to moral responsibility? Some, like Darrow, certainly are, but this need not be the case, unless we are using a very broad definition of compatibilism as "the universe is deterministic but we still have moral responsibility" and saying this is what hard determinists deny — this seems at odds with the earlier parts of the article. For example, the way the verse from Romans is interpreted here. Similarly, why are hard determinists "forced" to accept that people have free will in a compatibilist sense? It seems likely that they would just deny that this sort of "free will" is in any way different from any other sort of cause, which basically makes calling it "free will in a compatibilist sense" nonsense. One might also note that a libertarian could advance an argument that actions are determined by something, its just that this something is "the will" which is ontologically distinct from any other type of cause.
  • Theology: Should this section maybe be renamed to religions? "Jewish theology" doesn't really refer to anything and "Buddhist theology", while present in some academic writings rings a little false. Also, the introductory paragraph seems to move a bit off when it starts in on Aristotle (one might also note that for Aristotle, and some other thinkers, animals do have souls). Many of these sub-sections (e.g. Catholicism or Buddhism) could use expansion, or perhaps even their own pages — though a page on Buddhism (or Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, indeed, any tradition that accepts a notion of karma) would probably be very short...
  • Christian Thought: Why is the part about Christian communism included? This criticism and the response seem to be about the communism and not the Christianity, suggesting that it perhaps belongs elsewhere. Oddly missing from the subsections is something about perhaps Kierkegaard, Barth, or Tillich (not that their views are identical, but they are quite interestingly different from the opinions listed here).
You raise some good points. As to why Christian communism is included, I forget who since it was awhile since I hunted through the history, but a Christian communist zealot (and I don't mean that in a bad way, necessarily) came through and added that section along with the links at the bottom. I suspect it's still fairly raw and unedited material.
One thing I will respond to now is your mention in your edits that "Philosophical views on freedom - this could be read to imply that compatibilists do not necessarily hold determinism to be true)" and then editing them equivalent. Well, for what it's worth (since I was the one who made the change you just changed back), I consider myself a compatibilist who doesn't believe in determenism. I don't think that determinism, if true, would deny free will in the slightest, and would prefer that determinism was true if I were God... but I'm also of a scientific bent, and am willing to trust people who have studied quantum mechanics more than I that the chances for determenism being correct are extremely slim. So I don't see what's wrong with making that distinction, unless it's really set in philosophy definitions that all compatibilists must also be soft determenists (in which case I will bemoan the lack of an effective title for my position, but relent). SnowFire 05:15, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
I suppose its possible to hold a compatibilist view and not hold to determinism. To be honest, I had just never encountered that particular opinion before, but on consideration, there is no logical reason why one couldn't be a compatibilist and reject determinism. I'll go and revert my own edit. Ig0774 05:24, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

If you reject determinism and accept free will, you fit the generallt accepted definition of libertarianism or voluntarism. However, if you accpe the regruss argument against causal origination, then you fit no catgeory and will have to define yourself in some other way. I reject determinism and free will. I am an incompatibisist with respect to indeternism and free will. Following Galen Strwson, I call myself a "pessimist" about free will.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:44, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I find these categories (compatibilists...) confusing. The point is how one defines free will and why. Secondary issues are are how one defines determinism then whether or not they are compatible and whether or not free will exists or determinism holds. I think a typical compatibilist may very well not define free will the way members of other groups do so that the same term is used with different meanings which leads to confusion.

From numerous talks on the web and some graduate classes I got the strong impression that this definition of free will (close to that from Hume cited in the article, but maybe also close to what Spinoza thought) is what many compatibilits have in mind : free will is the ability to decide in agreement with one's principles (or main goals). The point of this definition is to save the link between free will and moral responsibility (albeit in a utilitarian sense) : responsible means sensible to the threat of punishment (i.e. able to include the threat in one's decision process).

This defined, most of the issues are then rather simple. For instance:

Some kind of macroscopic determinism is required to give sense to priciples, goals and a to a decision process. Nothing more, nothing less. Disputes on wheter or not a stronger determinism holds are irrelevant.
Randomness in our decision process is (from the above defintion) a mere illusion and if it was actual randomness it would merely remove any meaning and thus responsibility to one's actions.

Presenting the state of the art (section 1 and 2) around this issue would I think clarify the issues. Then one single potpourri section would be enough to regroup the red herrings and other entertaining disputes on "science and free will" or "hindu and free will".MikalZiane 13:42, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

This article needs a lot of work IMO

The first line :

Free will is the belief or the philosophical doctrine that holds that humans have the power to choose their own deeds.

is very careless. Even determinists believe that they make choices - the power to choose is simply called the 'will', not 'free will'. Also, the article doesn't address (as far as I can see) how the term may very well have meant different things through the centuries. It needs to give definitions of the term from different POVs, not just one modern POV. Dr parsley 12:37, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

How would you define free will? Rick Norwood 15:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
The definition is a bit sloppy if you read it carefully. To give the sum, NPOV opinion of philosophers (and others through the ages) we would be forced to say "Free will is" and nothing more. Not much of a sentence. As with any other philosophical topic it seems best to try and give a quick definition that will clue the reader in to what you are talking about and complexify the issue in the body of the article itself. Most philosophical writers seem either to avoid giving a definition at the beginning (relying instead on some intuitive sense of what the word is, and then developing a more technical sense) or write along the lines I suggested above.
As for the historicity of the word "free will", there doesn't seem to be too much difficulty. Most of the authors referenced in this page are referenced because of the arguments they made and not just because they said they were for or against "free will" (statements which wouldn't have necessarily made a lot of sense in the past). Ig0774 17:33, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Ig0774. The definition we have isn't perfect, but so far nobody has suggested anything better. Rick Norwood 18:51, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Free will can be described as Restricted (Free) Will, it being a choice from pool of Possible Paths or Logic Chains a subject chooses with accordances to his judgement of choices,i.e. what he decides is free,but choices are predictable(what he will choose can deduced if known all his reasoning and influences),and restricted to possible choices limited by circumstances and external events.

This conversation seems dead, but maybe the initial sentence could read "Free will is the belief or the philosophical doctrine that holds that humans have the power to control their actions." Perhaps this is less POV than using "choice". Thoughts anyone? iggytalk 04:49, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

It is indeed necessary to define free will and it is easy. I think it is a big mistake to announce that "This article covers the non-theological aspects of free will" as the root of the concept is at least partly theological.

Immediately recall that the very point of free will is to jusitify moral responsibility (historically, despite the fact that a perfect and omniscient god created man).
Then warn the reader that a perrenial source of confusion has been about the (apparent) randomness or non-determination in human choices and that this point will be adressed seperately because both "aspects" of free will are (apparently) at odds.
Then, maybe after some historical notes introduce compatibilits' (at least Hume-like) free will : the ability to choose in agreement to one's principles (or main goals). The point of this definition is to found moral responsibility (ability to include the threat of punishment into one's decision process).

Once this definition has been given the rest of the issues are much clearer and especially the fact the some limited (macroscopic) determinism is required to give sense to it.MikalZiane 14:09, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

New example in Christian thought

I copy edited this recent addition: "For example, when Jesus was nailed on the cross, the two murderers, one on each side, were about to die. Only one asked Jesus for forgiveness while the other, even at the end of his life with nothing else to lose, mocked Jesus and chose everlasting death over everlasting life." But I do not think it is particularly useful or fitting to the section, and it should be deleted. Comments? JHunterJ 09:33, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I expanded what you had done a bit. I think it serves as a useful example of the point of disagreement between Calvinists and Armininians. Rick Norwood 21:32, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Edit

'Agency theory' links to a strictly economics page. This is not helpful, surely.

Lestrade's edit

Excellent quotes, Lestrade. Rick Norwood 23:04, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


Merge with Will (philosophy)?

I am not sure whether these should be merged or whether Will (philosophy) just ought to be deleted as it has no content not already better done here. Li3crmp 04:34, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I took the liberty of moving this to the bottom, where new comments go.
I disagree. There's a need to mention that Will exists in philosophy, and a small, definitiony-article works very well there. That said, "Free Will" is a term with massive popular connotations and should be where the main article is. So the current situation seems fine to me. SnowFire 16:49, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for moving this to the bottom -- my bad.
I'm actually inclined to agree with you were the Will (philosophy) article not so bad. What is the philsoophical concpet of a will outside the Free Will debate?Li3crmp 18:05, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually... excellent point. That old article really was awful, with lots of peacock terms and didn't actually say much. That said, "Will" is used differently in philosophy (some think of it as some active, tangible force rather than simply inclinations, like in idealism); a general definition would probably only say "Will is" (as noted by someone on this talk page), so I tried to make it into a long-form disambiguation page. Most people will click on Free Will and be done with it. Do you think that this satisfies the problem? SnowFire 17:44, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Since nobody else seems to have commented, and someone else has edited the Will philosophy article saying otherwise, I'm removing the merge tag for now. Feel free to put it back should you think otherwise. SnowFire 03:27, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Argument against free will from no 'self' or 'I'?

Susan Blackmore and a bunch of other rationalist thinkers (especially those who are into Buddhist meditation) argue that free will is incoherent because no 'agent' actaully exists who can possibly have free will. It would be worth putting that in somewhere. 81.131.72.156 23:07, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

removal of eastern orthodox opinions

Why is it that the oriental orthodox are now speaking for all the orthodox and removing philosophical works about freewill by orthodox christians? LoveMonkey 03:26, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

When I first wrote that section as an Oriental Orthodox section, there was no Eastern Orthodox section. If you want to make one and put Eastern Orthodox positions of doctrine in it, go ahead. Just please don't add non-doctrinal philosophical and secular opinions under the Orthodox Christian banner. That should go somewhere in the philosophical section, because Doestoevsky does not have the spiritual authority to speak for any Orthodox beside himself. Thanks ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 03:31, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Text moved to talk page for discussion and consensus building

In spiritual science Spiritual science research finds that :

  • 35% of our lives are ruled by our free will (ie. are within our control)
  • 65% are ruled by destiny (ie. are not within our control). Examples of destined events include: birth, marriage, major accidents, death, etc.

However it is thought that we can overcome the 65% of our destiny part, by correctly using the 35% of our free will. [2]

Comment:1) "Spiritual science" gets about 5 hits on Google. This may therefore be considered Original Resarch. 1) The article is already way too long and looks like a miscellanous grab-bag of "every possible topic or position that one can imagine that has ever been or will ever be remotely related to Free Will". 2) There is already more-than-sufficent discussion of spiritual views in this article, IMO. 3) Since we are in the midst of a process of Featrured Article Rewview and this article is obviously controversial, from now one any substanital new edits must first be discussded on the talk page and consensused. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 06:57, 15 August 2006 (UTC)


Dear Lacatosias. I understand your concern about new content in the midst of a Featured Article Review. However do feel that the angle presented in the above text contributes to the richness of the 'Free Will' page. It also presents a viewpoint that is not present in any of the other sections, doesn't it? If the Free Will article itself is long as you say - then it should be shortened, but feel that we should not make compromises on the content for need of article edits. Welcoming comments that will support the inclusion of the text - in other parts of the article if more appropriate. Knowledge for All 20:45, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't mean to pick on your specific edits. It just seems fairly cleaer that this article suffers from a kind of dis-integration, in the strictest possible sense of that term. There is no idntifiable structure at all. It is just Free will according to X, Free will to Y, Free Will according to Q, Free will (or lack) according to Q1, Q2, Q3, etc.. This sort of thing has to have a limit somwhere. Soon, it will get down to the level of indivuals: free will according to Agnarius Pupillius the little-know 12th centruy Hessian monk, or Free will (better exampls) acording to scientology, Mormonims, Jehovah's witeness, Pentecostal denominationalism, an Ashante tribe of southwertsren Uganda, Swedenborgianim, etc...

But whether it is kept or not, the larger problems from the FAR ponin of view are copyediting and citations. Now, this is not my particualr areas of expertise and I'm a bit short on resources in this area (excpet what I can grab off the Web). First of all, we need to have a consistent citatation style.

The style I suggest is the one used in philosophy of mind, Bernard Williams and other articles. That is, text blah, blah, blah.<ref>Gogilardi, F. (2004) ''The death of free will''. New York: Macmillan. ISBN:009888</ref> Text, blah, blah, blah... In fact, we can try it this way, I'll start copying out text and asking for specific, complete references. Anyone who has (or can find) reliable and complete sources for the text can post it underneath the text. Then, I will insert the full citations into the text. We can work on copyedit later.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:34, 16 August 2006 (UTC)


Determinism and indeterminism

"[Determinism]] holds that each state of affairs is necessitated and thus determined by the states of affairs that preceded it. Indeterminism holds that this claim is false. It claims, instead, that there are events which are not entirely determined by previous states of affairs. Determinism is sometimes illustrated by the thought experiment of Laplace's demon. Imagine an entity that knows all the facts about the past and the present and all the natural laws that govern the universe. Such an entity is able to use this knowledge to foresee the future, down to the smallest detail.

Incompatibilism holds that determinism cannot be reconciled with free will. Incompatibilists generally claim that a person acts freely only when that person is the sole originating cause of the act and genuinely could have done otherwise. They maintain that if determinism is true then every choice is determined by prior events.

There is an intermediate view, in which the past conditions, but does not determine, actions. Individual choices are one outcome among many possible outcomes, all of which are influenced but not determined by the past. Even if the agent exerts will freely in choosing among available options, the agent is not the sole originating cause of the action, because no-one can perform actions that are impossible, such as flying by flapping one's arms. Applied to inner states, this view suggests that one may choose among options one thinks of, but cannot choose an option that never enters one's mind. In this view, current choices may open, determine, or limit future choices."

All of this section, down to Spinoza, is unsourced. Does anyone know the sources for these statements or should I delte them as Original Research?--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:34, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Well I went to a conference on this stuff in May. But I don't really have the time to devote to it right now. Campbell, Joseph Keim, O'Rourke Micheal, and Shier, David eds. Freedom and Determinism. MIT Press 2004 ISBN 0262532573, is my fav. Look at Kane, R. The Significance of Free-Will (1995) and The Oxford Handbook of Free Will (2002) (that's got Handbook style answers). The problem is there is plenty of debate about exactly what "determinism" is, and I'm certainly of the opinion that there are several distinct kinds. Similarly for each of the other terms. Likewise, even the grab bag positions earlier are often terrible overs-simplifications. I've got before me Gier, Nicholas, and Kjellberg, Paul "Buddhism and the Freedom of the Will: Pali and Mahayanist Responses" from the Frredom and Determinism book, and it makes me want to cringe at the "In Buddhist Philosophy" followed by a quote from one American living bhikkhu. We need to be summarizing millenia of hard stuff here. The external links are all good and you could probably get some cites from the SEP and IEP, read Newell's intro if you haven't done this stuff before. Bmorton3 14:06, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Extremely helpful. I'm taking a short break myself right now. You obviously agree that the thing needs to be completely overhauled (0:. The only reason I got involved is because I don't think anyone else will be willing to attempt it (much less anyone as truly knowledgeable about the material as yourself). If no one else does, I'll start looking for copies of these superb sounding sources and see if I can't make the article......well, at least, not a total embarassment. Thanks for the tips. I'm sure you've noticed that this is currently a Featured Article!! Not for long, I think.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:58, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
When using SEP as a source, please be cautious not to make the same mistake as one of the authors, that is, confusing the terminology of fatalism and determinism. These are clearly distinct concepts. IEP has an article on fate and fatalism in their list of forthcoming articles, but I do not think they have an article specifically on determinism. Zeusnoos 16:17, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Zeus, that's obviously an important point which I'm aware of. Do they actually make that mistake in the SEP?? Hmmm!! In any case, there are much more grave errors which I have already found and corrected. Indeterminism is not a form of free will!! Indeed, in my own view, they are fundamentally incompatible. The defintion of compatibilism is, please correct me if I'm wrong on this, unorthodox? My understanding of compatibilism is that it means simply that free will is compatible with causal determinism (however defined). This usually takes the form of redefining freedom so that it means "lack of external coercian, constraint" and so on.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 16:36, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fatalism/ This article is mostly about determinism with a section on theological predestination (overlapping, but still not the same as fatalism). It's often tricky to distinguish the two in ancient philosophy (in Stoicism for instance), but most analytical discussions are around determinism rather than fatalism (which is far more historically and conceptually squishy) Zeusnoos 17:04, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Its worse than that, the modern usage of the term "Determinism" is all over the place. I think "fatalism" probably IS one of the many meanings of the term "determinism" these days and SEP is accurately reflecting the usage. I stand by the SEP, and my old advisor O'Connor's claim that
"The main perceived threats to our freedom of will are various alleged determinisms: physical/causal; psychological; biological; theological. For each variety of determinism, there are philosophers who (i) deny its reality, either because of the existence of free will or on independent grounds; (ii) accept its reality but argue for its compatibility with free will; or (iii) accept its reality and deny its compatibility with free will. (See the entries on compatibilism; causal determinism; fatalism; arguments for incompatibilism; and divine foreknowedge and free will.) There are also a few who say the truth of any variety of determinism is irrelevant because free will is simply impossible."
If the Fates, determine our future then that clearly is a kind of Theological Determinism, and is one kind (but by no means the only kind) of determinism. (For that matter the SEP discusses both logical and theological fatalism, in the Fatalism article which is up now). There is a kind of compatibilism for each kind of determinism (causal compatibilism could be distinguished from theological compatibilism, for instance) you've defined (causal) compatibilism. "Lack of external coersion" is one style of compatibilism (the "guidance control" tradition of Ravizza and Fischer is a good example). As O'Conner points out in SEP "Free Will" there is a long tradition of "rational deliberation" compatibilists (Aquinas, Hume, Mele) and a "Higher-order desire" tradition from Frankfurt. None of these are required for compatibilism either, my own (sadly still unpublished) compatibilist account, doesn't work like any of these. Your position that free will isn't compatible with indeterminism, certainly has ancient roots too (now the "intelligibility question" is often phrased something like "is there any way to make sense of how free will could be compatible with indeterminism?" See "Agency, Responsibility and Indeterminism" Robert Kane, in Campbell, O'Rourke and Shier) Bmorton3 17:18, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Brian, your defense, while offering some clarity, may have been misdirected since I wasn't referring to O'Conner's article on Free Will but specifically the entry on Fatalism. When discussing Aristotle on these issues (as well as Diodorus and Ockham) it confuses matters when calling these arguments about determinism 'fatalism' because the terms in ancient philosophy for fate and fatalism were used in very different contexts than the Diodorus/Aristotle exchange. Richard Sorabji in his classic study on Aristotle (Necessity, Cause and Blame) discusses Aristotle on determinism rather than fatalism (Aristotle never wrote a work 'On Fate' as did many philosophers after him). Suzanne Bobzein, in Determinism and Freedom in Stoic Philosophy discusses determinism rather than fatalism when analyzing the arguments of Chrysippus and his opponents. She deliberately leaves out key aspects of Stoic fate, and by doing so, limits her discussion to Stoic determinism, but ignores a more comprehensive understanding of early Stoicism in the process. Fatalism and determinism often coincide in Stoicism but not always in a coherent way. I'm afraid if I go into too much detail I'll be pre-publishing OR, and I don't want to do that here. My approach to the issue is to examine fatalism in a wide range of historical contexts. At any rate, I do not think that an agreement by contemporary philosophers will be reached on the definition of the term fatalism - nearly every discussion of it (in law, psychology, and other fields besides analytical philosophy) offers a slightly different understanding while often reverting the terms. Determinism is easier to pin down to types and degrees. Zeusnoos 13:58, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Ah I was over-defensive. I agree with you about determinism/fatalism getting tricky in Stoic contexts. And your other points, and if you were thinking of the SEP "Fatalism" article, I think I even agree with you there. Bmorton3 16:00, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I wasn't claiming originality. It just find the arguments that I have read that indeterminism makes things more difficult for free will more convincing than the counteraguments. But, on the article, your point about theological determinism, biological (genetic) determism, and causal determinism all being just varieties of determisim is absoletely correct. The problem therfore arises: how the heck can all this be addressed in this already huge article!! I think we are "constrained" to have to radically simplify. The "Free Will" article in SEP is outstanding. It's the kind of article I like to print out and study for a few days. But we need a much different approach on Wikipedia, IMO. That is, unless YOU want to write an article at that high a level and forget about average readers. I'd be all for it, of course.(-: Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 17:53, 16 August 2006 (UTC);
HA!, when I finish the two OR articles I'm working on now, the next thing I need to work on is my free will stuff, so I actually might try to work on this page in a month or so. But I wholeheartedly agree, with you this page needs hefty simplifying and summarizing! Actually, maybe it needs some forking, a "Free Will in Christian Theology" page might really clear some of the cruft off of this page in a fair way. None of my comments were for the front page, just to defend my advisor from the accusation of having conflated fatalism and determinism. The trick is to know the breadth of variety out there and THEN try to summarize... Bmorton3 18:23, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
Meanwhile, it seems obvious that there are several things that non-experts can do to greatly improve this article. Forking of sections, for example, is a great idea that should not offend anyone. Reorganizing material so that it falls into the right sections, factual verification and copyediting will subtantiall improve the article right off. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:41, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
I object to this fork being done without a consensus. Please merge the theology into this article again and please have the goodness to not call it "cruft". If not, we can hold a poll to see if the editors here want to re-merge it here or split it. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 21:01, 17 August 2006 (UTC)
Fine, we shall have a vote on it then. If you win, the article can continue to degenerate (that's what the FAC review and the immiment remval from FARC are all about obviously!!) and I will leave it to its ignominious destiny. If I win, there may yet be hope.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:34, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Vote on fork of Theology section

Fork - it was absolutely irrelevant, unsourced, badly-written, redundant, and can more seriosuly be treated in summary style with a link to full article. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:10, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Fork - The current version of the page is still long, and philosophical issues are complex. By using summary style and forking to more complex issues, we keep the overall quality of the main page, while simultanously alerting the reader that this overview is not the whole story. Edhubbard 09:47, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't fork - Lacatosias has just slapped an unsourced tag on the forked article Free will in Theology stating there are no sources at all, even though casual references are already given for numerous primary sources, including: Jonathan Edwards, John L. Girardeau, Boethius, Loraine Boettner, St. Augustine, THomas Aquinas, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Doestoevsky, Emanuel Swedenborg, Deuteronomy, Pirke Avoth, Moshe Chaim Luzzato, Talmud, Rabbi Akiva, etc. etc. Calling it "unsourced" within hours after forking it does not bode well for the intentions for this article, which is indeed one of the best sourced articles on wikipedia and a vital one. It even has some proper footnotes, and unfortunately the 'refs' section did not copy all the footnotes to the new forked article in the quick cut-and-paste that was performed here. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 11:40, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

You're joking, right?? Did you read the FAR link above?? You don't need to make your absurd case to me, you need to make it to Sandy and the other FA reviewers who are about to remove this thing from FA status because of "hardly any references" and "aweful prose style". Please take my word for this (I have written two successful FAs and had one flunked in the last six months or so) , if you were to put this thing up for FA status now, with all of the theology section thrown in----it would be a laughingstock!! One of the best articles on Wikipedia!! This thing has been the laughinstock of the philosophy "department" since I've been here.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 11:56, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I just now read the FAR link... I see the one who complained about sources was my colleague ዮም who started the FAR, and he specifically complained about the poor literary quality of the "scientific section", which is barely readable, and the fact that that section used repetitive sources. The Theology section mentions many sources: Jonathan Edwards, John L. Girardeau, Boethius, Loraine Boettner, St. Augustine, THomas Aquinas, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Doestoevsky, Emanuel Swedenborg, Deuteronomy, Pirke Avoth, Moshe Chaim Luzzato, Talmud, Rabbi Akiva. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 14:30, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
A fair point. The article was so long, messy and 'inconsistent in its sourcing style, that I didn't actually read through the whole thing. Be that as it may, I have been working hard to get sources for the science and philosophy sections. But I honestly think there may be further complaints from others. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:07, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Codex Sinaiticus, let's think about this from a different perspective. Forking should be thought of as having multiple lectures. On the first day of every course, I give an overview lecture, in which I say what I will focus on throughout the remaining lectures (cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, consciousness, whatever). "We are going to talk about topic X for the next ten weeks. Topic X is complicated. Therefore, we will have seperate lectures on topics A, B, C, D and so on, all of which are part of X." Now, when I set up a course like that, it's not because I think that topics A, B and C are unimportant. Rather, it's exactly the opposite! Topics A, B, and C are important enough that they deserve a seperate lecture to be discussed fully. But, since they are part of topic X, I mention them in my first lecture, which gives an overview.
Similarly, wikipedia entries should be limited to a reasonable length. Think of the free will page as topic X, and you will see how my logic applies to the current issue of forking "Free will in theology". It's not that theology is irrelevant to the free will discussion, but that it is a complicated enough topic that it deserves a page of its own. By judiciously deciding which things to cover in an overview, and which need more time for discussion, we can make the logical flow of ideas clearer. Ask yourself, would you rather an FA on free will that forks to "Free will in theology", which brings interested readers to both, or a page that tries to do everything and succeeds at none, and therefore leaves readers overwhelmed, confused, and deters people from finding the information they need? Even though wikipedia is not a textbook, it should contain a mix of overview and specialized articles, leading the interested reader to the information they want with a minimum of effort.
This said, as a fork from the main free will overview, the quality of the forks counts too, and if there are things that are really broken as a result of the fork, we should spend some time working on fixing and correcting those, too. Best wishes, Edhubbard 12:34, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Fork a big article might even have multiple forks as it grows. Aesthetics has 3, and Art 2. We might want to fork the science stuff at some point if it keeps growing. At its best, forking is a sign of growing useful content needing to be re-organized. If Free Will in Theology, looks like it is ghettoizing the religious side too much, maybe forking to Free Will (philosophy) and Free Will (theology) and making a real disambig page would work. Free will is a great example of an article that is well sourced under the older standards of sourcing, (it mentions lots of appropriate primary texts) but poorly sourced under the newer standards (it conforms poorly with Wikipedia:Citing sources). I recently had a page turned down for GA (not even FA), because the sources were all at the bottom, without having heavy in-line citation. The new standard is something like every paragraph and every controversial claim having an in-line cite. Bmorton3 15:31, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


Second I think this might be an ideal solution, as the Free will in theology page is nearly as large as the Free will "main" page. Although obviously religion and philosophy are deeply intertwined, I think that we can make a fruitful distinction between academic philosophy and religious philosophy. Then the two pages can cross-reference where appropriate, but the Free will (theology) page would be a full fledged page in its own right. I notice, too, that this isn't the first time that this discussion has come up. The theology section has been growing since this article was an FA, and there was some discussion only a few months ago of a fork. Edhubbard 13:50, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Opening paragraph and definition of free will

It may be a point of semantics, but the words "free will" are seemingly ill-defined in the opening paragraph of the article. Free will should perhaps be defined by saying "Free will is degree to which, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions and decisions." The rest of the article then deals with the debate concerning the existence of free will.

As the opening sentence/paragraph currently stands, it sort of implicitly defines the words "free will" by talking about the main question associated with free will: "The question of free will is whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions and decisions." Note the lack of direct reference to the words "free will".

I'm not a philosopher, so I thought I would only point this out and leave the page edits to those who are experts. 137.82.36.10 20:46, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

This article is in need of revising

I don't believe that is pointful to discuss genetics and biology if we are discussing causal determinism, unless we make it clear that these scientisms are the manner in which causal determinism would make itself felt, i.e. we are genetical biological organisms. But quite simply, if there is no 'will' or 'soul', then the universe is deterministic, there can be nothing that makes a decision ex nihilo, a decision is only chemicals in the brain acting as is necessary. Quantum mechanics seems to have no effect on determinism; it only shows that this is 'indeterminable determinism', and therefore it is impossible to predict the future.

To wit, the world is deterministic, but this is really not a big deal, because, as modern biology and psychology shows us, the necessary choices we make are a result of the long line of causal events stretching to our birth which constitutes that which we think of as our 'self' (and earlier of course, but this 'we' do not experience). But it is important to note that scientific explanations merely confirm what is already known, namely that the universe is inherently deterministic; however, at the same time one realises that the consequences are not really that profound anyway.

The one major impact though is the end of moral responsibility, as Friedrich Nietzsche expounded in Human All Too Human (1878). This means that justice and punishment are never in reality warranted, they are merely dispensed in order to scare other citizens into not committing further acts of criminality. Eventually, we will probably begin to treat the sources of criminality, such as economic inequality, boredom and general crapiness, instead of using fear.

This second part is a little less important. The article does however need rewriting to show that biological and genetic determinism is merely the flesh on the bones, so to speak, of causal determinism, and is what should be expected given that we are human beings. If we were machines, we'd probably be writing about the determinism inherent in semi-conductor encoding.

In summation, I visited the website sometime ago and emerged with a half-arsed understanding, but it does not seem that hard to give a coherent explanation of causal determinism that explains that biology and genetics are just what we are, i.e. causally determined beings. The explanation given is long-winded and dependent on historical arguments that no longer seem relevant, especially when the entirety of the issue can be explained in half as many words. It might be nice however to give an account of the development of the idea after one has given the rudimentary explanation of why free will is a linguistic fantasy. As far as I am aware, no scientist has ever observed a 'will'. So why do we waste our time arguing about whether such an imaginary object is 'free'? Tsop 13:37, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Casual determinism is disputed. So is the idea that, if true, it entails the end of morality. The current article represents both sides of the story on both issues. You comment is personal POV and not really editorial. 1Z 14:42, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Libet refs

Re: the Libet (1983) ref. There are numerous previous articles by Libet on timing of actions, but this is the first to introduce the rotating dot/second hand manipulation to get at the timing of the sensation of conscious will question; it is also considered the most important reference on this subject by modern commentators (see e.,g the Haggard 2005 TiCS paper). The closest previous is:

  • Libet et al., 1982 Libet, B., Wright, E.W. Jr, Feinstein, B. and Pearl, D.K. (1982), ‘Readiness potentials preceding unrestricted “spontaneous” vs pre-planned voluntary acts’. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 54, pp. 322–35.

But this only focuses on the fact that the RP precedes spontaneous actions (previous studies had used actions in response to commands). User:edhubbard forgot to sign... It was posted about 10:00, 18 August, 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I just wasn't casting doubt. I just wanted confirmation from someone who knows about it, whethere that would be the appropriate citation. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:38, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Don't worry, I know. I was just saying that I had gone back and double-checked. I make plenty of reference mistakes (even a couple in published OR papers!) so no worries. Edhubbard 10:44, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Biology and free will

this section needs specific references (with page numbers, etc). i'm very familiar with this topic, but i don't recongize the precise claims being made, even where they are attributed to a source. --Rikurzhen 11:07, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I would appracite your help in getting it right, then, certianly. I founds the section lacking cmplòetely in sources and tried to match text with whatever sources I could find that conatined ideas resembling it. E.g., there was a statement about Desmond Morris. The only thing I have by Morris that expresses a sory of determinism is The Naked Ape. some parts are just.....bizarre. I left them with ciatiomns needed tags.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias
Pinker is a good source (The Blank Slate, chapter 10 "The Fear of Determinism"). However, it doesn't match with what's actually written there. I'll give it some more thought. --Rikurzhen 11:25, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
I just went back through the edit log on the page, and it seems like the vast majority of what is in the section from "Desmond Morris" onward was added by an IP user on June 21, 2006. This is the only thing posted by this user. So, my guess is that this is probably not good stuff, but I don't have the expertise to either clean it up or make a decision on which bits are cancerous and which can be safely left. It seems like there might be a couple of salvagable sentences at the begining, but I am not sure about the rest. My expertise is in neuroscience/cognitive science (see my user page) and I have been doing what I can on those parts, but I see that you are a grad student in genetics, so this is definitely something that you know more about than either of us that are working on the project now. Edhubbard 11:32, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Many of the factual statements about biology are true, but the statements linking them to free will appear to be made up. Pinker's view is that fear of determinism in the context of "genetics" and "evolution" is a mistake, that it is "a confusion of explanation with exculpation"(p.179), and that responsibility doesn't require behavior to be uncaused, only that it responds to praise and blame. --Rikurzhen 11:38, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Nice job on that section!! Just one criticism:
The view of most researchers is that many human behaviors can be explained in terms of humans' brains, genes, or evolutionary histories.
Terms like "most", "some", "a few" are frowned on becasue of WP:WEASEL. The view of which researchers? Even citations would be sufficient.

Tourette syndrome

User Sandy writes in Featured article review: "I've been watching the statement in there about Tourette syndrome for a long time. I have no idea what it's trying to say, so I hope you [Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias] can address that. I can't figure out what a neurological condition has to do with Free will." Maybe the following addition will help:

"While normals may also perform involuntarily movements (e.g., the patellar reflex), the movements and utterances that Tourette's patients make will usually be regarded as under free will in a normal person."

...or something similar? - fnielsen 22:31, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Trying to catch up here, and without having reviewed what has been inserted in the article so far, a few comments:
Just a note: be careful of slippery slopes. I follow the medical and other TS literature very closely, and I'm not aware of any successful legal defense using TS as an "excuse".
Also, some clearing up of terminology: "normals" is problematic, implying people with tics aren't normal. A better word is needed.
Involuntary is also problematic. Please read Tourette syndrome, where you will see how the TS literature explains involuntary vs. unvoluntary in describing the semi-voluntary nature of tics. Again, it's tricky, so be careful of slippery slopes. In fact, it might be better to use another movement disorder as an example, since tics have been described as a voluntary response to an involuntary urge. You might want to focus instead on dystonias, choreas, or other movement disorders, since they don't involve a premonitory urge as in TS.
Third, "Tourette's patients" is also problematic, since the majority of people with TS never need medical attention. They are not all "patients" (or even worse, the British custom of referring to them as "sufferers"). Wiki guidelines (somewhere, I'm too busy to go look for them right now) advocate first-person language: people with Tourette's.
In general, I haven't yet figured out what this article was trying to say in relation to free will and TS, but will try to keep up with you all as you refine it. Sandy 18:16, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Sandy, 1) that para about "normals" and so on was not added to the text 2) I think, but I'm not an expertthat Edhubbard has addressed the issue of "involunrty versus "unvolunarty" in his revisions of that section. Whether another medical condition is more appropripate I will leave to you folks to work out. 3) Interesting point. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:25, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Hi Fnielsen, Thanks for your comments. I think I see what you were after with these comments, and I have tried to expand them to clarify my interpretation of your arguments. However, it should be noted that this section, and to a certain extent, the section above on neuroscience and free will, assume a certain viewpoint, namely that the brain creates our sense of free will, and it is only a matter of knowing whether this occurs before, after, or even independently of our actions. This being a philosophy entry, such assumptions are bound to provoke controversy, and perhaps would justify either eliminating or forking some of this more complex (and loaded) material. Let's see what the other editors have to say, and of course, if I've misinterpreted you, please feel free to correct anything that I've added. Edhubbard 00:40, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm not exactly sure. Oliver Sacks once wrote (don't remeber the book, don't remeber the condition right now) of the case of a patient who had extensive damage to some portion of the prefrontal cortex. The patient was fundamentally unable to make decisions. According to Sacks, his center of "agency" had been severely compromised. For example, he would stand in the shower for hours on end (even an entire day) thiking about his next action and not being able to carry it out. If experiments could be carried out (perhpas they have?) on chimps or bonobos which "knocked out" such an agency center in the brain, and the chimps could no longer act or make any other decision, then it would have been demonstrated that action, at least, is not under the control of some ontologically indepenednt thing called "free will" ir "self". There would still remain the question about thuought, desires and so on. If imaging technology can be refined to the point that it could detect changes in the brain that correspond to every change in thought, desire and so on, then an expeiemnt could hypothetically be set up so that one could determine wthere the "agency"-damaged indivuduals thoughts and desires really "belonged" to him or not. It could, in fact, be determined that "this" area of the brain is what creates the illusion of free will. I see no reason, in principle, why free will (of the metaphysical libertarian kind) cannot be falsified by further scientific investigation. I don't think all neorscintifict and cogntive science investigators just assume that the brain creates the illusian of free will (rightly so, IMO). Even if they do, it seems to me that this assumption wil eventually be called into question and there will be a serach for the neural correlate of free will, as there is now the neural correlate of consciousness. Being a philosphical naturalist, I believe that philosophy formulates the basic questions and science eventually provides the answers. Being a pessismit about free will, I think that science will eventaully prove that the existence of such a phenomenon is absurd. The processes in the barin which cause the sensation of free will must be investigated through futher experimentation of the right kind.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:21, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
I haven't yet reviewed what has been inserted in the article, but take care with Sacks, since not all of his views are shared by all of his peers. Sandy 18:16, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
Nothing in the text about Sacks. I was just responding to Ed about "my take" on the importance of science to this topic.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:30, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
At a personal level, I agree with you on all counts, Francesco, but I also wanted to flag this new section to you and the other editors to make sure that 1) its relevance to the philosophical question of free will was clear, and 2) to make sure that we don't get hit with an NPOV tag unnecessarily. Feel free (pun intended) to change anything in that section to make it better fit with the flow of the article. Edhubbard 08:31, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Good point. Actually, there was a similar problem with the emergentist section. I found this statement bizarre: in generative philosophy of.....there is no free will. Hmm??? Do you mean that it has solved the problem or what? So, I changed it to "it is assumed that there is no free will." I will scan through and see if there are any other strong implications of factual truth like that. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:50, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Another thing is that the NPOV policy, with regard to science, just means that if the majority view of biologists, say, is that determinism of some kind is true, then it just has to be documented that that is the majority view.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:04, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, so I should have checked the article first: I see most of my wording and references from the TS article have already been used. I would make these changes (among the many movement disorders involving involuntary movements, only TS and tics disorders have the premonitory urge, utterances are tics, and avoid the use of patients).

For example, in persons with Tourette syndrome and related syndromes tic disorders , patients will involuntarily make movements, such as tics, and utterances, make involuntary movements and utterances called tics, despite the fact that they would prefer not to do so when it is socially inappropriate. Tics are described as semi-voluntary or "unvoluntary",[1] because they are not strictly involuntary: they may be experienced as a voluntary response to an unwanted, premonitory urge. Tics are experienced as irresistible and must eventually be expressed.[1] People with Tourette syndrome are sometimes able to suppress their tics to some extent for limited periods of time, but doing so often results in an explosion of tics afterward. The control which can be exerted (from seconds to hours at a time) may merely postpone and exacerbate the ultimate expression of the tic.[2]
Sandy 18:23, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Sandy on her edits. It's always a tough business when we deal with medical "conditions" (a term which is supposed to be neutral in the community, but has negative connotations in the broader world; see my pet project, the synaesthesia page). And Sandy is right, a lot of the science was a cut and paste from the Tourette's page, so a couple of the things that she mentions here might need to be double checked there, too. I'll get those changes right away. My main goal here was to improve and expand the original section by FNielsen enough that it can be seen as relevant to free-will issues, but it can always be improved. Edhubbard 07:31, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Oh, I see. All the changes were in the lead sentence, which we inherited from previous versions. There's nothing to double check on the Tourette's page. My bad. Edhubbard 07:38, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Yep ... Nothing to check on the TS page: I wrote it, and I'm the only TS person writing on Wiki :-) Much better now: I didn't understand what the article was saying before these changes. Now it makes sense. Sandy 11:13, 22 August 2006 (UTC)


Lead para

Hi all. The first sentence of this article seems wrong: free will is a philosophical problem, surely, not a particular (libertarian) answer to that problem. How about this (as a first go):

The problem of free will is the prpblem of whether human beings really at freely, and therefore of what freedom of action means. Addressing this problem requires both understanding the relation between freedom and causation, and determining whether all events are subject to causation. Positions taken on the problem therefore argue both over determinism versus indeterminism - whether all events are caused or not - and over compatibilism against incompatibilism - whether freedom can coexist with determinism or not. So, for instance, hard determinists about free will argue that determinism is true, and that this makes real free will impossible.

Any thoughts? Cheers, Sam Clark 11:17, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

I've edit that para a bit: main problem was just the term pessimsism. I think "hard determinism" is more commonly used for that position. Pessimism, I think, is the idea that free will is false, whether determinism ois true or not.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 12:02, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. Pessimism is a possible and by no means necessary psychological consequence tied more with fatalism than strict determinism. Zeusnoos 13:23, 21 August 2006 (UTC)


Hey Sam. I've worked mostly on trying to find sources, restructring and copyediting up to this point. There is still much work to be done on the old boy, espcially in the phi section. I thought I would leave the lead for last. Besides the problems you hae noted, it is not even close to a summary of the article.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 12:10, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

New determinism section

Ok, I've changed the intro. The previous version did beg the question and there was that horrible, out-of-the blue, sentence about Marx and Engles versus relgious authroties. I've devoped the determinims section so as to get the varios determinisms we are not interetested in discussin out of the way. I don't think we can adress all dtermeiens in this artcile. But if someone disagree, please leave a note. Now, I'm just going to add refs for that part. Then, I have to get off for the day.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 12:49, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm=

Well, whatever the quality, one thing that cannot be said now is that this article lacks references. LOL!! --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 13:04, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

We seem to have lost all the images. Let's put at least a few back in. Maybe a famous philosopher, and some scientific image, and maybe a religious one. Bmorton3 17:12, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Lost all?? There was only one when I first looked at it: an hyper-inflated image of D'Holbach in about the middle of the page. It was almost scary. I cut it down to 100pp and then, seeing that it still looked awkward with no other images, I just cut it out. t was weird. I will check in the history to see if there were any others. In any case, I agree there should be a few judiciously placed images added. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 07:12, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Leopoldus and Lobulus

Great image!! I will get the link to the transcipt of the whole trial. Darrow makes one of the most impsiring, near-philosophical, speeches I've ever heard from a lawyer. He just comes right out and says it: I could never be a prosecutor. What a horrible occupation. You have to try to fix blame on soemone in a universe as screwed up as this one. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 08:17, 22 August 2006 (UTC)



Computability and free will

I was going to put in the following paragraph, but as this article is being reviewed for had at one point Featured status, I decided to throw my contribution to the dogs and see what people think. I think it should go in the "Science and free will" section, but whether under the new subheading "Computability and free will" or under "Physics..." or "Neuroscience...", I don't know. Here it is:

In his controversial book A New Kind of Science, author Steven Wolfram suggests that it may be possible for what fully appears to be free will to exist in a deterministic world because of what he calls the principle of computational equivalence. This principle posits that many computations of sufficient complexity are basically equivalent in the scope of what they can compute, and that their results cannot be obtained by any simpler computation.
If the workings of one's brain can be thought of as a "computation", then there is technically no such thing as free will. Yet if the principle of computational equivalence applies to the brain's workings, then there exists no way even in principle to determine what the outcome of the thought process will be that is any simpler than just observing the outcome of the process itself. So for every conceivable practical purpose, free will exists as an intrinsically intractable illusion brought on by the principle of computational equivalence.

To get some feel for the principle of computational equivalence, examples of such computations where that principle applies would (most likely) include NP-hard computations.

The early word "controversial" sounds like POV, but I believe that can be demonstrated. On the other hand, it certainly ins't essential. I am sure this could use some other rewording, but I think it may be a valuable contribution. Comments? Baccyak4H 15:29, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I was interested in this computability aspect to free will as well, although maybe my idea of it is different from yours. Basically I caught wind of the idea in a footnote in Dennett's Freedom Evolves (ch. 3, footnote 6, pg. 91), where it mentions that, because of the halting problem, even someone with a complete description of a deterministic universe and knowledge of the laws of physics would not be able--in principle--to determine his own future actions. Dennett says that this subject is discussed in the following sources: Ryle, Gilbert, 1949, The Concept of Mind, London:Hutchinson; Popper, Karl, 1951, "Indeterminism in Quantum Physics and Classical Physics", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1, pp. 179-88; and MacKay, D.M., 1960, "On the Logical Indeterminacy of a Free Choice," Mind, 69, pp. 31-40. I have not looked at these, but I think I'll try digging them up--you may be interested in doing so, too. More to the point, if the idea I'm talking about here is essentially the same as the idea that you cite from Wolfram's book, then you might want to base your contribution on those instead. I don't have any personal opinion on Wolfram and have never read more than a few pages of his stuff, but I do know that his book was not peer reviewed (or at least, self-published), and that there are at least some people who explicitly accuse him of quackery and of being less than rigorous in citing sources. Even if this is all heresay, it raises a red-flag, I think, for the acceptability of Wolfram as a source for a Wiki, and if there's less controversial references we could make, we should use those. -David Morris 70.137.167.58 09:14, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

The subject is infinite!!

We may have to fork off the science section. Especially if we start adding the Wolframs, computational versus connectionist free will, free will as decsribed by Jennifer Lopez, etc........--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 16:12, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we have to be careful about adding any more to the science. From a philosophical point of view, this is a sign of an active field and question. However, from the standpoint of the free-will encyclopedia entry, we have to keep it on track. My vote is that we not add more stuff right now, as the article is still under FAR, but once that passes, we think about forking off the science and free will section, and then we should add the Wolfram thing... Wolfram's arguments remind me of Hofstader and Dennett's arguments about "as if" semantics/intentionality, given the recursive level-jumping abilities of human cognition. Perhaps Wolfram is on to something here, but it seems too speculative to include at this point. Discussing Wolfram's idea, and any controversy around it would definitely push us into forking. It's so close right now, I keep holding my breath when I look at the change log... Edhubbard 16:21, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
This sounds like a sub-variety of emergentist theory. Would it make more sense to rephrase the "Determinism and Emergent Behaviour" section to include computation complexity arguments? That stuff is already partly forked to Emergence. Let promote the Emergence link to a partial fork but leave the rest of the science for now. Bmorton3 16:24, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
The question is never really what should be added to this article, but what short summaries should be left in it. Ideally, ALL the sections should be like the physics and free will, theology and free will, biology and free will section. There hsould be a link to main article: compatibilism (that should be seprated from incompatibilism, BTW) , for example, with a summary of three of four paras. [Determinism], same thing. The neuroscience section may need to be fairly extended. But, the point is, even if it were taken out, we should ask; "What needs to be left in this (main) overview article?"--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 16:36, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
Bmorton3, I like your first go through. Much more concise than my suggestion, in the right place, with reference. Baccyak4H 17:10, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

ISBN numbers

Does anyone know why older books don't have ISBN numbers on them? What the heck does ISBN stand for anyway?

Never mind. I got the answers at ISBN.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 11:11, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Images

ooh I like the Libet image!!! I looked for a good one and couldn't find one! Schopenhauer is good too. Bmorton3 20:06, 24 August 2006 (UTC)


Not go back!!

After the work that was put in by vasrious people here, I would hope that the intention is not to go back to the sort of mess that we inherited from the previous editors.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 13:55, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

User Lacatosias's Deletion

I had added the following paragraph to the article because I thought that it was of importance. The paragraph contains clear and simple assertions about the subject of this Wikipedia article by two famous thinkers. It actually presents the essence of free will in a very few words. However. User:Lacatosias decided that the contents of this paragraph were not of any value. By reprinting it here, I leave it to the reading public to decide whether there is any worth in the paragraph. In view of the frivolous references to popular culture that are allowed to remain in many serious Wikipedia articles, I have to admit that I was surprised to see that this paragraph was quickly removed from the article.

In his On the Freedom of the Will, Schopenhauer simply and clearly stated, “You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing.” Einstein, in his 1928 speech to the German League for Human Rights, assented. “I don’t believe in the freedom of the will,” Einstein said. “Schopenhauer’s saying, that a human can very well do what he wants, but can not will what he wants, accompanies me in all of life’s circumstances and reconciles me with the actions of humans, even when they are truly distressing. This knowledge of the non-freedom of the will protects me from losing my good humor and taking much too seriously myself and my fellow humans as acting and judging individuals.”

Lestrade 15:00, 25 August 2006 (UTC)Lestrade

Look the issue is where it should go if we put it in. Free-will is already on the long side and we can easily produce tons and tons of relevant quotes to fill it up. We don't have a Free Will in pop culture section yet. I suppose you could create one and put the Einstein quote there, if you really wanted to. It doesn't fit well in physics, cause it isn't about physics. There is already a Schopenhauer quote in the section on Schopenhauer. If there were consensus that this quote was better we could replace it, but I don't think we'd want 2 Schopenhauer quotes, certainly not as block quotes. You could also create another page, and reference it here. If you wanted a Schopenhauer on free will page, you could create that, put lots of Schopenhauer quotes, including Einstein's reference too him, and then we could re-work how Schopenhauer is discussed on the main page. But just adding more quotes, even when they are relevant, is going to slowly get the page in the kind of trouble that almost lost it its FA status. Bmorton3 15:19, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I was just trying to adress this issue, folks. I'ìve replcaed one of the Shopengauer quotes (there are now 2 in that section) and I decided to put the Einstein quote in the physichs and free will sections to provide it woth spem context:

Einstein himself put his position on free will in these terms in a 1928 speech to the German league for Human Rights.[citation needed]

I don’t believe in the freedom of the will. Schopenhauer’s saying, that a human can very well do what he wants, but can not will what he wants, accompanies me in all of life’s circumstances and reconciles me with the actions of humans, even when they are truly distressing. This knowledge of the non-freedom of the will protects me from losing my good humor and taking much too seriously myself and my fellow humans as acting and judging individuals.

I need a source for this!! Otherwise it's useless in any case. Now, I have to leave in a rush!!--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:23, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

In reference to the "useless" quote, take a minute from your busy schedule to visit
http://www.einstein-website.de/z_biography/credo.html Lestrade 18:57, 25 August 2006 (UTC)Lestrade
Nice bit of sophistry, but you know I meant "useless beccause unsourced",and not "useless because inane or irrelevant" by that idiot Einstein. Geesh!! Anyway,I'm glad we could resolve this amicably. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 19:59, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
As you will now see, he first wuote os in the text. The one from Einsetein needs a source. Problem solved!!--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 15:25, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi all, I agree that we need to be selective about how much we add. The goal of wikipedia is to be an encyclopedia. As Bmorton noted on the FAR page, there is a danger that the page becomes too long, and/or cluttered with things that are off topic, redundant, or even simply non-optimal. See, for example, the discussions above on science and free will. I am going to make a few minor additions to that, now that it's Friday and I finally have some time away from OR to work on wikipedia, but they will be small and (hopefully) focused and relevant enough to make it worth keeping them. I think the same constraints have to be kept in mind with quotes by Shopenauer or Einstein. It seems like Lacatosias has made a reasonable compromise after Lestrade posted here, of including the quotes without letting the page grow too long. Edhubbard 16:11, 25 August 2006 (UTC)


Schopenhauer and Steiner

Re: Text was reverted because it is claimed that 'Steiner did not edit or publish the works of Schopenhauer' -- but actually, Steiner did do so -- he was appointed as editor of Schopenhauer and Jean Paul's works by Ludwig Laistner (who worked at the Goethe Institute in Weimar) -- for the Cotta *Bibliothek der Weltliteratur* editions of the complete works of Schopenhauer and of selections from Jean Paul. i've added a ref tag with citation -- perhaps the problem is that the germans have a record of it, but the english don't.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. Arthur Schopenhauers sämtliche Werke in zwölf Bänden. Mit Einleitung von Dr. Rudolf Steiner. Vierter Band. Inhalt: Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie. Ergänzungen zum 1. Buch der "Welt als Wille und Vorstellung". Stuttgart: Verlag der J.G. Cotta'schen Buchhandlung Nachfolger, o.J. [1894-96]. 346 pp. [[3]]
Ludwig Laistner had at that time to undertake for the Cotta Bibliothek der Weltliteratur editions of the complete works of Schopenhauer and of selections from Jean Paul. He entrusted both of these to me. [[4]]

it seemed the inclusion of that detail made the text flow better if one is provided with this connection between steiner and schopenhauer. also, because steiner directly cites schopenhauer's comment 'that a human can very well do what he wants, but can not will what he wants' in chapter 1 of the 'philosphy of freedom'.

New image

I tend to be a very visual thinker, so I thought that perhaps some people would appreciate this simplified diagram of the possible philosophical positions regarding the problem of free will. I created the image using MS Word, and then converted to png going through Photoshop. I have the original text and can modify the image to specs if anyone wants a higher resolution version, of if you have any thoughts about chaning it around. One thing that I noticed is that my thinking seems clearer if I put the question of determinism first, and the question of whether free will exists or not as secondary. If we just reorder the two quesions in the intro this will flow, and there will be a good fit between the image and the text. Let me know what you think. Edhubbard 23:23, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

I've uploaded an improved version of the image. Now all the possible philosophical positions are located at the same level, so we aren't putting on above another. I have also added question marks for the two main questions, and colored those boxes orange. The blue and gray have been lightened, as they appeared somewhat too dark on my screen at thumbnail size (although it was ok at full size). Let me know if you have any other changes. Edhubbard 23:53, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
Great thanks!Bmorton3 13:45, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Featured article review

Many of you have done amazing work on this article in roughly two weeks. I finally looked at the state of this article when nominated for FAR—what a difference! (I am almost done with my own copy review of it.) Truly the best of Wikipedia here! Outriggr 09:10, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it was almost intimidatingly bad. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:24, 27 August 2006 (UTC)