I think we just have a difference in vocabulary, because my beliefs are really similar to yours, but I just call it compatibilism. — flannel jesus

There is an important distinction between my (and possibly yours as well) conception and standard compatibilist stances. According to standard compatibilism, beliefs and desires when you begin deliberating are such as to determine (through some high-level psychological laws or regularities, maybe) that you would perform some specific action. If this process isn't psychologically alienating (on Frankfurt's 'deep self' account, for instance) then the action is 'free' (as opposed to it being coerced or impeded). Crucially, though, it's the agent's antecedent psychological state that do the causal work, as it were.

On my view, by contrast, the antecedent psychological states fulfill the exact same causal role as the antecedent physical states. There are mere enablers of your agentive rational powers. It is the intelligibility of M2 in light of M1 (in light of rational norms that you apprehend), and not the deterministic causation of M2 by M1 (allegedly explained by psychological laws) that ensure that M2 occurs. You are making M2 occur through the ongoing disclosure of the intelligibility of this action, in light of the rational content of M1, in the progressively unfolding present moment. This contrast sharply with the view that it is your past psychological states that are the causal antecedents of M2, and that are such that you have no power to see to it that anything else could happen except what had been determined by the past.

Yet again, Grok 3 improved significantly the clarity of my poorly phrased argument above by rephrasing it thus:

Grok 3:

"You’re right that our views may have a lot in common, and it might seem like we’re just using different words. But I think there’s a deeper difference in how I see agency, and it goes beyond vocabulary. Let me explain.

In standard compatibilism, when you deliberate, your beliefs and desires at the start—your antecedent psychological states—determine what you’ll do. Through some kind of psychological laws or patterns, those states cause a specific action, like M2. If that process reflects your “deep self” (say, per Frankfurt), it’s free, and no coercion was involved, your actions are free. The key, though, is that your past psychological states do the heavy lifting: they set the action in motion, and you couldn’t have done otherwise given those states and the laws.

My view is different. I see those antecedent states—both psychological (like beliefs) and physical (like brain processes)—as enablers of your rational powers, not as causes that fix your action. They give you the tools to deliberate, but they don’t pull the trigger. What ensures you do M2 is its intelligibility in light of your current state, M1, guided by rational norms you grasp in the moment. These norms aren’t deterministic laws predicting what you’ll do; they’re standards of what you ought to do—like choosing what’s coherent or good based on M1. For instance, if M1 is a desire to act kindly, rational norms guide you to help someone (M2), but you could still choose otherwise—norms don’t force you.

Take an example: Imagine M1 is your hunger and memory of a great cake, and M2 is eating it. Standard compatibilism says your past hunger and memory cause you to eat, end of story. In my view, you eat because, in the present, you reason it’s fine to indulge—your deliberation, not your past, makes it happen. The past sets the stage, but your agency lies in how you reason now.

So, when you choose M2, it’s not your past states determining it through some causal chain. It’s you, in the unfolding present, making M2 happen because it makes sense given M1 and the norms you follow. That’s why I don’t call it standard compatibilism: your freedom isn’t about the past locking in your action—it’s about your reasoning shaping it right now."

I conceive of compatibilism as quite general, not any specific way of framing the process of choice making. Compatibilism is a classification of a set of beliefs, rather than a specific belief.

A compatibilist belief in free will is one that satisfies this criteria: whatever free will you think we have, you would think we have even if we live in a deterministic extended casual system - regardless of the specifics of how you actually believe our extended casual system works, and also regardless of if the casual system we're in is actually deterministic.

An extended casual system is deterministic if it evolves to the future in a singular way, where given a particular state at t1, you will always arrive at the same t2. Regardless of how that evolution works, regardless of how you choose to frame that evolution - whether you choose to invoke agency or choice or even souls, or you just stick to physics - if t2 will always follow from t1 no matter how many times you replay t1, then it's deterministic.

And I think everything you've laid out fits within that criteria.

That's not what the article in the op is about.... In short, if you maintain that if you were to set the entire world state back to what it was before a decision (including every aspect of your mental being, your will, your agency), and then something different might happen... well, maybe something different might happen, but you can't attribute that difference to your will. — flannel jesus

Why not?

because your will is the same. How can you attribute a difference to something that was the same?

Let's say one little kid grows up to be a great athlete, and another little kid grows up to be a serial killer, despite similar upbringings in a similar environment. "Why did they turn out so different?" one asks. "Well," tim wood answers, "they had rich parents."

What do you mean?

Well the person who grew up to be a great athlete had rich parents, that's why he did that.

And the person who grew up to be a serial killer had rich parents, that's why he did that.

You see the problem with that as an explanation? It's... not. It's not an explanation. Their parents being rich can certainly be PART of an explanation for why they each went down the paths that they did, but it can't be the explanation as a whole - in order to explain a difference, you must appeal to a difference. To explain why one kid did something different from another kid, you have to explain it with a difference. This kid did something different because of this different thing he experienced in his life that the other kid didn't, or something.

Likewise with Bob1 and Bob2. Their will was the same prior to the choice, so to explain the difference, you have to find the source of the difference - you have to find a difference. And given that Bob1 is perfectly the same as Bob2 prior to the choice, that difference doesn't come from Bob himself. Because he's the same.

And given that Bob1 is perfectly the same as Bob2 prior to the choice, that difference doesn't come from Bob himself. Because he's the same. — flannel jesus

Sure, why not? You have defined that in but at the same time agree it's not possible. Your conclusion holds for an impossible world, and we're back to impossible in, useless out.

Btw, in the thought experiment, just how exactly do Bob1 and Bob2 act differently?

↪T Clark I'm a compatibilist, — flannel jesus

(From another thread.). I had never heard the term compatibilism before coming to this site, and can't say that I have much of a handle on it. You say these things;

The reasoning in the linked article is why I believe libertarian free will doesn't make sense — flannel jesus

I'm actually inclined to think it's basically tautologically true that, for any given evolution of a closed system from one state into another state, either that evolution is deterministic or it involves some randomness. — flannel jesus

Is it random?
— Patterner

In my view, yeah, that's really the alternative to determinism. If we have a system evolving over time, it seems to me that any given change in that evolution must either be determined or be at least in part random. — flannel jesus

It doesn't sounds like you think there is free will, which, from what I'm reading, is a part of compatibilism.

Or is it that you think there is free will, but not libertarian free will?

I don't think it's strictly logically impossible that Bob2 would do something different. I just think it makes no sense to attribute that difference to him if he's the same as Bob1.

Btw, in the thought experiment, just how exactly do Bob1 and Bob2 act differently?

Bob1 gets a book, Bob2 goes to the kitchen, in the linked article.

Or is it that you think there is free will, but not libertarian free will? — Patterner

That's right.

I don't think it's strictly impossible that Bob2 would do something different. I just think it makes no sense to attribute that difference to him if he's the same as Bob1. — flannel jesus

But everything is the same in this thought experiment. So how can anything be different?

Cool. Can you tell me what kind of free will you have (pardon the pun) in mind? I understand (more or less?) the determinism and randomness, but not the free will.

✨randomness✨

If you account for all facts between world one and world two, and all relevant facts about both worlds are precisely the same, then the difference between those worlds must not be sourced in some fact about those worlds. A casual force that isn't sourced in any existing fact, to me, is exactly what "random" means.

I'm not saying randomness really exists, I'm saying IF this thought experiment goes through as described, that's what randomness would be.

I am a decision making machine. I'm free, perhaps in a trivial way, to do (or try to do) the things I want to. The things I, as a decision making machine, decide to.

You should definitely read the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy article on compatibilism. No doubt my concept of compatibilism is not universal among compatibilists.

In short, if you maintain that if you were to set the entire world state back to what it was before a decision (including every aspect of your mental being, your will, your agency), and then something different might happen... well, maybe something different might happen, but you can't attribute that difference to your will. — flannel jesus

If you set the world back to just before the decision point, all the factors that led to the decision would still be present - even mental factors that may operate independently of the deterministic universe. I don't see how a different decission could ensue- unless it's due to some randomness. Randomness doesn't seem a reasonable basis for libertarian free will.

✨randomness✨ — flannel jesus

Yes, that's very nice. How do you have that in a deterministic world?

Further, you take your understanding of cause and causal for granted as somehow given. But they're not. Try it. What does it mean for a cause C to cause effect E? If you say, "C makes E happen," you're open to the question as to exactly how C makes E happen, and that not-so-easy to answer in any particular case, and impossible in general terms.

And a case can be made that randomness is in the eye of the beholder, an artifact of imperfect or inadequate vision.

The question is really if free will exists at all. If it does, and I think it obviously does, then determinism is either limited to certain classes of cases, or ruled out altogether - depending on what is under consideration.

How do you have that in a deterministic world? — tim wood

The conversation is about indeterminism. So the answer is, you don't. I think you've possibly misunderstood what's happening here.

↪Patterner I am a decision making machine. I'm free, perhaps in a trivial way, to do (or try to do) the things I want to. The things I, as a decision making machine, decide to. — flannel jesus

In the Book vs. Water scenario, which action is a thing you want and are free to do, and which is the result of the machinery? I don't suspect you mean book is one and water is the other. Perhaps you are free to choose to get a book, but the machinery decides which book you will pick? Or the other way around?

You should definitely read the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy article on compatibilism. No doubt my concept of compatibilism is not universal among compatibilists. — flannel jesus

Yes, I've started that. Thank you.

In the Book vs. Water scenario, which action is a thing you want and are free to do, and which is the result of the machinery? — Patterner

That's not two separate things. The machinery --is you--.

Or at least a physical instantiation of the abstraction of "you" maybe. But probably simpler to leave that out and just say the machinery is you.

I could certainly have misunderstood what you are saying.

In what way are you free, if only in a trivial way? I would think a decision making machine just crunches numbers. Or, rather, the neurological impulses, which all came about due to previous impulses, all guided by upbringing, physiology, interactions with others, etc., interact with one another until a final arrangement (in regards to the books, although that becomes part of the next group of impulses that interact when future choices are made) is reached. Just as the arrangement of everything at the bottom of a mountain after an avalanche is the ends result of many interactions. (And that arrangement becomes imput for future events, such as erosion and the presence of animals.) I don't understand what freedom exists.

https://www.georgewrisley.com/blog/?p=47

This has been my issue with libertarian free will for maybe decades. I've worded it in various ways myself, but I think this guy puts it pretty well.

In short, if you maintain that if you were to set the entire world state back to what it was before a decision (including every aspect of your mental being, your will, your agency), and then something different might happen... well, maybe something different might happen, but you can't attribute that difference to your will. — flannel jesus

This is a well-known objection to libertarian free will. It even has a name in the literature - the Luck Objection. Naturally, libertarians are well aware of it and try to address it in various ways.

The author of the blog post articulates the argument pretty clearly, but he is misrepresenting some key terms. For example, he conflates libertarianism with incompatibilism, and he presents compatibilism as a variety of determinism.

I would suggest reading an introductory article on the subject, such as Randolph Clarke's SEP article Incompatibilist (Nondeterministic) Theories of Free Will

I think you've possibly misunderstood what's happening here. — flannel jesus

Always possible. Can you make it clear in one or two clear sentences?

sure. When he's talking about world 1 and world 2, Bob 1 and Bob 2, that only makes sense in an indeterminist context. In a determinist context, Bob 1 and Bob 2 will behave the same way because they are in the same conditions. Only in indeterminism can you start in the same state and end up doing something different.

For example, he conflates libertarianism with incompatibilis — SophistiCat

He does? I missed this. I don't think he said incompatibilism at all in his article. Libertarianism is a subcategory of incompatibilism, and that's what he's talking about.

Only in indeterminism — flannel jesus

Well done! Can you do likewise for indeterminism? At the moment I understand that as simply not determinism. If you allow for randomness, you may find "random" hard to define - be assured, though, I shall ask for a definition. And I'm not playing word games. I'm simply trying to understand big words with smaller, simpler words, and to see if together they make sense.

I think we're going to find that once ambiguities are cleared away, that free will is an ingredient of most decisions. All of those allowing for the possibility of it, which includes all cases where some decision may be made.

I believe in free will my dude

I'm not sure what you mean by "do likewise for indeterminism"

He does? I missed this. I don't think he said incompatibilism at all in his article. Libertarianism is a subcategory of incompatibilism, and that's what he's talking about. — flannel jesus

Well, it's not. Libertarianism and incompatibilism often go together, but they are neither identical nor subcategories of one another.

Oh, I've never heard someone take that position. Wikipedia says

In particular, libertarianism is an incompatibilist position[2][3] which argues that free will is logically incompatible with a deterministic universe. Libertarianism states that since agents have free will, determinism must be false.

Why do you think libertarianism isn't a subcategory of incompatibilism?

I'm not sure what you mean by "do likewise for indeterminism" — flannel jesus

Say what it is, as succinctly as you did the other.

Why do you think libertarianism isn't a subcategory of incompatibilism? — flannel jesus

It can strongly depend on what one makes, how one interprets, determinate state of affairs. This, for one example, can hearken back to the possibility of teleology determinacy - as one of many examples. Something that today's notions of determinism denies. Yes, I get that this outlook is by no means common nowadays, but I can find nothing to evidence the metaphysical, to not mention logical, impossibility of such forms of determinacy. But since teleological mechanisms are generally speaking jargonish to you, I'll skip the details. All the same, yea, I for one am a libertarian compatibilist. Have been ever since I read David Hume (maybe a different issue). So liberarianism is not necessarily a subcategory of incompatibalsim (namely, a lack of compatibility between libertarian free will and deterministic processes). One could also think of this stance as a form of "semi-determinism" - one which thereby endorses indeterminism (in the sense of today's notions of causal determinism) but denounces the notion of incompatibilism (again, between libertarian free will and determinacy).

I duly grant it isn't a common outlook nowadays, but it does illustrate the case when it comes to logical possibilities regarding libertarianism and incompatibilism.

I succinctly said what determinism is? Can you copy and paste the thing I said that you think is the succinct definition of determinism? If you do that, I suspect there's a really nice way to modify that definition - by adding in a well-placed 'not' perhaps - to produce a good definition for indeterminism. After all, the prefix in- means "not" - not determinism.

So wikipedia got it wrong you think, interesting. And I see people across the internet getting it wrong the same way (perhaps they're all just bouncing the misinformation from wikipedia amongst each other). How do you think that happened? Why is it so common that people think that, pretty much -by definition-, libertarian free will means incompatibilist free will?

-edit- I even see Stanford Encyclopedia saying the same thing. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#LibeAccoSour

second paragraph: "and ‘incompatibilist’ or ‘libertarian’ accounts of source and self-determination"

And phil papers: https://philpapers.org/browse/libertarianism-about-free-will

"Libertarians believe that free will is incompatible with causal determinism"

And this notre dame philosophy department https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/libertarian-free-will-contemporary-debates/

"Libertarianism is the view that (a) agents are sometimes free and morally responsible and (b) free will and moral responsibility are incompatible with causal determinism."