Talk:Free will/Archive 12

New outline by Pfhorrest
Below I have annotated the new outline provided by Pfhorrest. Of course, it is easier to pick at an outline than to construct one, and I hope my annotations are viewed as a step in the evolution of the outline, and not viewed as some form of refutation of this evolutionary process.

I hope my comments will be addressed to help me come closer to what Pfhorrest has in mind.


 * Incompatibilism (free will as lack of nomological determination)
 * Distinguishing determinism from fatalism
 * Philosophical arguments for why this is the correct sense of free will, including descriptions of the positions:
 * Metaphysical libertarianism
 * Hard determinism
 * Hard incompatibilism (may deserve its own section or at least subsection as it adds another criterion to the sense of free will)

→ Here the use of "the correct sense of free will" is a contentious phrasing. Definitions are not "correct" or "incorrect". One can classify the logical relationship drawn between definitions as "logically correct" or "logically incorrect"

→ It is contentious to suppose that these "all or nothing" definitions exhaust the repertoire of possible definitions for free will.


 * Physical findings on whether or not nomological determinism in fact is the case

→ I doubt that there are any such physical findings. The physical findings like studies of the addicted brain, or studies of behavioral modification using "brainwashing" or "advertising" or psychological counseling show only that in some prescribed circumstances a modicum of determinism is introduced into decisions and behavior.


 * Theological discussions about reconciling God's omniscience with free will

→ One can introduce theology into the matter, and historically that has been very significant. However, I suspect that theology is not logically separate from secular views of the matter.


 * Compatibilist senses of free will still concerned with something like nomological determinism (unpredictability, two-stage models, etc; may be better split into several sections)

→ Compatibilism, in a broad sense, is not concerned particularly with "nomological determinism" if that means the view that everything is determined. Rather, it is concerned with what aspects of mental life are determined and to what degree.


 * Philosophical arguments for why this or that is the correct sense of free will

→ Again, there is no "correct sense" of free will to be found by analyzing hypothetical formulations. The correctness of any definition is an empirical matter, to be established by how well that definition squares with observations, however one classifies observations. It is (I'd hazard) extremely unlikely that any definition can be shown to be completely correspondent with observations, and so no definition will be correct in every situation.


 * Mathematical limits of prediction, etc

→ Mathematics has no power of prediction. When a theory is introduced that incorporate relations between a mathematical formalism and observations, that theory may have limited value for prediction. But, for example, geometries (of various kinds: Euclidean, spherical, Riemannian) are autonomous creations, and have application to such things as surveying, navigation, and so on only for certain domains of experience. It is the application of geometry that is correct or not; it is not the geometry itself.


 * Classical compatibilism of the Hobbesian variety
 * Overview of Hobbes' view
 * Criticism and distinction between freedom of will and freedom of action

→ This distinction is, I believe, extremely crucial and should be raised in importance in the article. Per - "Philosophers who distinguish freedom of action and freedom of will..."


 * Classical compatibilism in the Rousseau sense (or not, as we seem to be missing whatever we used to have on this sense)
 * Modern compatibilism of the Frankfurtian variety
 * Philosophical arguments for why this is the correct sense of free will

→ Again, the use of "correct" is inadvisable, confusing logical constructions with the applicability of theoretical constructions to observations of the world.


 * Biological arguments about whether biology permits us to have free will in this sense

→ Again, biology does not "permit" a "sense" of free will, but offers evidence as to whether a particular sense of free will has any utility in the real world. The type of observation accepted in biology is subject to evolution - for instance, brain scans were not available in early times. Also, there is reason to doubt that biological observations are applicable to some of the issues involved here, as noted by, and differently, by Bohr, also discussed here.


 * Sociological arguments about whether culture permits us to have free will in this sense

→ Again, sociology so far as this is a science doesn't "permit" a "sense" of free will, but offers evidence as to its utility in a particular (possibly severely proscribed) arena.


 * Psychological and neurological arguments about whether our minds and brains are set up in a way to permit us this sense of free will

→ Just which "sense" is being compared with just what observations of mind and brain? Many senses of "mind" have yet to be placed in correspondence with the kind of observations accepted in biology, and some would argue that such a correspondence between the subjective and objective is impossible in principle. Some would argue that such correspondence awaits the development of a more general theory of complex non-linear feedback systems which will introduce new concepts more readily associated with the subjective experiences of mental life. (As an aside, it might be noted that not all concepts of a theory have to be observable (the stance of the verificationist school): only that the theory has to predict observable consequences.)


 * Other discussions of free will (as useful, as an illusion, etc -- maybe multiple sections, maybe integrated into other sections)

→ The discussion of free will as a "useful" concept should be, in my view, a major aspect of this article that can be ranked right up there with the historical background and the various definitions. The various definitions must be related to usefulness in order that their discussion be more than an amusement. Brews ohare (talk) 16:01, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

→ In this connection, it might be noted that a lot of discussion of free will is related to its practical implications for law, medicine and education. In particular, a belief in "free will" underlies the apportionment of legal punishment on the basis of whether one was "in control" of one's actions, or a victim of ungovernable emotion. The law's application of punishment or treatment for addiction depends upon one's views about an individual's ability to "will" going cold turkey. And so forth. These are not academic issues only. Brews ohare (talk) 16:21, 5 November 2012 (UTC)

It should be noted that this new outline has abandoned to a degree one aspect of the previous flowchart, namely the attempt to inter-relate the various approaches as branches of a tree of various logical alternatives. Maybe the tree structure has some merits? Brews ohare (talk) 13:09, 4 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I don't mean to have the article state in its own voice which sense of free will is the correct one. And I have some sympathy for your apparent position that what matters is we just be clear about what sense we mean. Nevertheless philosophers do notably argue that one particular formulation of the concept of "free will" better matches our common (informal) use and intuition of the concept, and we need a space to include that content.
 * For a prominent contemporary example, incompatibilists like to appeal to the principle of alternative possibilities as a necessary condition of any formulation of the concept of free will (and then show that determinism would run counter to that principle and so is incompatible with free will), but Frankfurt counterexamples intend to show that there are conditions where, determinism or not, the principle of alternate possibilities clear does not hold true, but we nevertheless intuitively want to say someone still acted of their own free will.
 * And I'm not sure what you're on about regarding empirical verification of definitions. That makes no sense. A definition is not in itself a position on whether or not free will actually exists; it's just a claim of what exactly this free will thing we're talking about would be if it existed. Definitional issues are about clarifying the question, not about coming up with their answers; that comes afterward.
 * For an example you're likely to agree with: Hobbes said that by "free will" all we can really sensibly mean is unimpeded action, the freedom to do what we want, unbound by chains and the like. You and I will both agree, I think that that is a bad definition of free will; that is the definition of freedom of action, and freedom of will is something else entirely. The argument between compatibilists and incompatibilists is like that: they're not arguing about facts of the world, they're arguing about what facts are relevant in the question "do we have free will?". They're arguing about what we really mean when we ask that question. And we need a place to include their arguments that "This is what we mean when we ask whether we have free will, and here's why we have to mean this...".
 * For a prominent contemporary example, incompatibilists like to appeal to the principle of alternative possibilities as a necessary condition of any formulation of the concept of free will (and then show that determinism would run counter to that principle and so is incompatible with free will), but Frankfurt counterexamples intend to show that there are conditions where, determinism or not, the principle of alternate possibilities clear does not hold true, but we nevertheless intuitively want to say someone still acted of their own free will.
 * And I'm not sure what you're on about regarding empirical verification of definitions. That makes no sense. A definition is not in itself a position on whether or not free will actually exists; it's just a claim of what exactly this free will thing we're talking about would be if it existed. Definitional issues are about clarifying the question, not about coming up with their answers; that comes afterward.
 * For an example you're likely to agree with: Hobbes said that by "free will" all we can really sensibly mean is unimpeded action, the freedom to do what we want, unbound by chains and the like. You and I will both agree, I think that that is a bad definition of free will; that is the definition of freedom of action, and freedom of will is something else entirely. The argument between compatibilists and incompatibilists is like that: they're not arguing about facts of the world, they're arguing about what facts are relevant in the question "do we have free will?". They're arguing about what we really mean when we ask that question. And we need a place to include their arguments that "This is what we mean when we ask whether we have free will, and here's why we have to mean this...".


 * I think you misunderstood my use of the definite article. I did not mean that to be an exhaustive list of all positions on free will -- not "THE positions on free will". I meant it to be a list of some positions on free will, specifically those three (incompatibilist ones); like if I said "bring me the ex-presidents Bush and Clinton", I would not mean that those are all of the ex-presidents, but that I want some ex-presidents and the ones I want are those two.
 * Within an incompatibilist sense of free will though, those positions are exhaustive. Incompatibilists all agree free that "free will" means something which requires indeterminism. So within that framework, either determinism is true and therefore there is no free will (D .: ~F, hard determinism), determinism is false and we do have free will (metaphysical libertarianism), or determinism is false but for other reasons we still don't have free will (hard incompatibilism). Incompatibilism states, in short, "~(D & F)", which leaves open the possibilities "D & ~F" (hard determinism), "~D & F" (metaphysical libertarianism), and "~D & ~F (hard incompatibilism).
 * Of course compatibilists go on to dispute that "~(D & F)", and argue that free will is something unrelated to the relationship between D and F. So there are more positions besides those three, but within incompatibilism those three are logically exhaustive.
 * Of course compatibilists go on to dispute that "~(D & F)", and argue that free will is something unrelated to the relationship between D and F. So there are more positions besides those three, but within incompatibilism those three are logically exhaustive.


 * I was thinking of findings in physics there, when I said "physical findings". You know, things like all this indeterminism stuff physicists have been going on about since Heisenberg, Schrodinger, et al. As far as contemporary physics is concerned, nomological determinism is false; the universe is indeterministic and we have very strong empirical evidence to support that assertion. This is very relevant to incompatibilism, as unless refuted it narrows the possibilities down to metaphysical libertarianism or hard incompatibilism, and the close examination of indeterminism and its relationship to randomness starts to give strong credence to hard incompatibilism between the two, or else more compatibilist views (e.g. we don't want to say that an electron has free will, but its behavior is indeterministic, so by an incompatibilist sense of free will why shouldn't we? is there something more that's required for free will besides indeterminism? is there such a thing as too much indeterminism? Then we get into two-stage models and the like...)
 * I was thinking of findings in physics there, when I said "physical findings". You know, things like all this indeterminism stuff physicists have been going on about since Heisenberg, Schrodinger, et al. As far as contemporary physics is concerned, nomological determinism is false; the universe is indeterministic and we have very strong empirical evidence to support that assertion. This is very relevant to incompatibilism, as unless refuted it narrows the possibilities down to metaphysical libertarianism or hard incompatibilism, and the close examination of indeterminism and its relationship to randomness starts to give strong credence to hard incompatibilism between the two, or else more compatibilist views (e.g. we don't want to say that an electron has free will, but its behavior is indeterministic, so by an incompatibilist sense of free will why shouldn't we? is there something more that's required for free will besides indeterminism? is there such a thing as too much indeterminism? Then we get into two-stage models and the like...)


 * Agreed that the conclusions are going to be the same either way, but there are whole bodies of literature which deal with the problem of determinism as caused by God having perfect knowledge and control of every event that will ever happen, rather than the problem of determinism as caused by there being rigorous impersonal laws of nature which permit no randomness into the inevitable progression of one moment to the next. There is a lot of general material that applies to both, but then there's a lot of material talking specifically about physical, causal determination (like the section above) and a lot of other material talking specifically about divine foreknowledge, so I think they could each deserve their own subsections if we have material on them both.
 * Agreed that the conclusions are going to be the same either way, but there are whole bodies of literature which deal with the problem of determinism as caused by God having perfect knowledge and control of every event that will ever happen, rather than the problem of determinism as caused by there being rigorous impersonal laws of nature which permit no randomness into the inevitable progression of one moment to the next. There is a lot of general material that applies to both, but then there's a lot of material talking specifically about physical, causal determination (like the section above) and a lot of other material talking specifically about divine foreknowledge, so I think they could each deserve their own subsections if we have material on them both.


 * True on the first sentence, but the second only describes some varieties of compatibilism. Compatibilism is not a monolithic thing like incompatibilism where everyone agrees on the definition of free will; it's only united by disagreeing with the incompatibilist definition.
 * What I meant here was that there are other compatibilists which, being compatibilist, say that free will can coexist with nomological determinism, but still say that the important factor in free will is something very much like nomological determinism. Specifically, I'm thinking of two-stage models which say that some indeterminism is necessary but also that some determinism is necessary, which are almost a direct outgrowth of the concerns that would otherwise lead people to hard incompatibilism ("too much" of either would undermine free will); and of Dennett's sense of free will as unpredictability, which says that even if the past and the laws of nature do strictly necessitate specific future actions and people can't do otherwise, we have no way even in principle of predicting what those actions will be before they occur (for a variety of reasons), so for all intents and purposes the universe might as well be indeterministic, even if it's really not.
 * These views are strictly speaking compatibilist, but they are very close to incompatibilism in their definition of what "free will" is. Instead of saying free will requires indeterminism, they say it requires some but not too much indeterminism, or that it requires unpredictability. In contrast, other compatibilist senses of "free will" work fine even if there is complete nomological determinism and complete predictability; they say it's not a matter of "how much" something is determined (there doesn't need to be any random input to the system at all), or whether we can determine (i.e. predict) the outcome, but about what specifically determines what, about how outcomes (people's actions) are determined, by what process.
 * These views are strictly speaking compatibilist, but they are very close to incompatibilism in their definition of what "free will" is. Instead of saying free will requires indeterminism, they say it requires some but not too much indeterminism, or that it requires unpredictability. In contrast, other compatibilist senses of "free will" work fine even if there is complete nomological determinism and complete predictability; they say it's not a matter of "how much" something is determined (there doesn't need to be any random input to the system at all), or whether we can determine (i.e. predict) the outcome, but about what specifically determines what, about how outcomes (people's actions) are determined, by what process.


 * I was speaking not of the ability of mathematics to make predictions, but on limits imposed by mathematics on our ability to generate predictions from mathematical models. This is related to Dennett's sense of free will as unpredictability. Issues with computational complexity and chaos impose not just practical but even theoretical limits on our ability to compute sufficiently detailed simulations of the world faster than the events we're simulating occur. So even if there is some distinct fact about what a particular person will do at a particular time, given the past and the laws of nature, and even if we somehow knew the past and the laws of nature perfectly, it may (and probably is) the case that we simply cannot, even on a perfect ideal optimal computer, do the computations necessary to predict that that person will do, before they do it. We could cut corners and get a less accurate prediction faster, but then that inaccuracy lets unpredictability slip in again.
 * I meant for this subsection to be an area to discuss computational complexity and chaos theory, within the section on this sense of free will as unpredictability. Just like we'd have a subsection on quantum indeterminism within the section on incompatibilism. They're scientific or mathematical issues relevant to that sense of free will and so deserve a summary at least in the relevant section.
 * I meant for this subsection to be an area to discuss computational complexity and chaos theory, within the section on this sense of free will as unpredictability. Just like we'd have a subsection on quantum indeterminism within the section on incompatibilism. They're scientific or mathematical issues relevant to that sense of free will and so deserve a summary at least in the relevant section.


 * I personally agree that it's an important distinction, but it's not one that everyone makes, and there are other important distinctions that not everyone makes too. I think it's an issue of "what exactly do or do not we mean by 'free will'" exactly like the definitional issues surrounding compatibilism vs incompatibilism, and so belongs in this section among discussion of the validity of this sense of free will. Just like compatibilists tell incompatibilists "free will is something different from just indeterminism; indeterminism is not the same thing as, and is not enough for, free will" -- likewise you and I and most modern compatibilist say "free will is something different from just freedom of action; freedom of action is not the same thing as, and is not enough for, free will".
 * Your second sentence there seems a little strange, I'm not sure exactly what you were trying to say.
 * Your second sentence there seems a little strange, I'm not sure exactly what you were trying to say.




 * Note that I said "society", not "sociology"; the object of study, not the field which studies it. Likewise, I meant "biology" in the sense of the stuff biologists study (organisms, genes, etc), not in the sense of the activity that biologists do (which is to study that stuff).
 * That is to say, by "whether biology permits" and "whether society permits", I mean that in these sections we discuss issues of biological and cultural determinism, and look at the scientific evidence for whether our behavior is completely fixed by our genetics/upbringing/etc, or if there are feedback mechanisms which meet the definition of free will in this sense (being able to want what you want to want, and to change which of your desires are effective on your behavior, rather than just wanting what you've been programmed to want and inevitably acting on whichever of those desires is strongest).
 * That is to say, by "whether biology permits" and "whether society permits", I mean that in these sections we discuss issues of biological and cultural determinism, and look at the scientific evidence for whether our behavior is completely fixed by our genetics/upbringing/etc, or if there are feedback mechanisms which meet the definition of free will in this sense (being able to want what you want to want, and to change which of your desires are effective on your behavior, rather than just wanting what you've been programmed to want and inevitably acting on whichever of those desires is strongest).


 * I'm not entirely sure what your objection here is. All I meant was "in this section we will discuss psychological determinism".
 * I'm not entirely sure what your objection here is. All I meant was "in this section we will discuss psychological determinism".


 * I meant for this to read like a narrative version of the tree structure. Let me maybe outline it again with more verbiage to make that clear:
 * (Incompatibilism) Some people say that free will is incompatibile with nomological determinism.
 * They argue that it must be so because [principle of alternate possibilities, etc].
 * But they disagree about whether determinism is true:
 * (Hard determinism) Some say it is
 * (Metphysical libertarianism) Some say it's not
 * Theologians have argued about whether God's omniscience entails determinism and what that means for free will...
 * Physicists used to think determinism was true because [...], but modern physicists now think determinism is false because [quantum physics], however [doubts about quantum indeterminism], etc...
 * (Hard incompatibilism) Some of these people say that free will is also incompatibile with indeterminism, so any way you slice it, we don't have it.
 * But other people say that determinism is not incompatible with free will...
 * (Two-stage models) Some people say that free will requires some determinism, but not too much...
 * They argue that it must be so because [...].
 * (Unpredictability) Other people say it doesn't matter whether or not or how much you're determined, but whether or not you're predictable.
 * They argue that it must be so because [...].
 * Mathematical results tell us that even theoretically deterministic systems can be unpredictable even in principle because [chaos, computational complexity, etc]
 * Others say that it doesn't matter whether or not or how much you're determined or predictable, but about what specific limits there are on your abilities.
 * Some say that your will is free so long as you are not imprisoned or in chains.
 * They say that it must be so because [...] But others say that free will has nothing to do with that, that's just freedom of action.
 * Other say that your will is free so long as nobody's pointing a gun at your head.
 * They say that it must be so because [...] But other say that free will has nothing to do with that, that's just political liberty.
 * Still others say that your will is free so long as you have a psychological feedback mechanism which allows your wanting to want something different to cause you to want something different, etc.
 * They say that it must be so because [Frankfurt counterexamples, etc].
 * Various influences on our behavior jeopardize the possibility of such feedback mechnisms:
 * (Biological determinism) Genetics
 * (Cultural determinism) Upbringing and conditioning
 * (Psychological determinism) Other psychological issues
 * Etc. Is the tree structure more evident there? I don't think we want to nest section within section within section or else most of this article is going to be 4 or 5 sections deep and all buried within a 2nd-level section on compatibilism.
 * I'm very tempted to split it into four major sections:
 * Incompatibilism
 * Incompatibilist-like compatibilism (two-stage and unpredictability models)
 * Classical compatibilism (freedom of action and political liberty)
 * Modern compatibilism
 * But I fear that might be original research.
 * --Pfhorrest (talk) 06:54, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * --Pfhorrest (talk) 06:54, 6 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Pfhorrest: There is a lot to think about in your reply, and I'll take some moments to think it over. The OR concern is a bugaboo of WP that I've encountered mostly as flack from contributors who don't want to hear about something like A→B + B→C means A→C. I suspect that the organization of a WP article is necessarily OR as it doesn't exist anywhere else, cannot be cited, and if it could, would be challenged as violating NPOV because lots of other organizations of material could be envisioned that stress some aspects differently. One has to hope (perhaps vainly) that common sense has some role on WP. Live in optimism! Brews ohare (talk) 14:45, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

Revised outline on incompatibilism
Phorrest: Below I will annotate the beginning of your new proposal to continue our discussion.


 * (Incompatibilism) Some people say that free will is incompatibile with nomological determinism.

→ It is helpful here to be clear whether this incompatibility is a matter of logic or one of fact.
 * They argue that it must be so because [principle of alternate possibilities, etc].

→ The article Alternative possibilities suggests this principle is about moral responsibility, which introduces a bevy of other complications not about the definition of free will. Perhaps you intend to replace:
 * ""a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise."
 * with:
 * "a person has free will to do something only if he could have done otherwise."
 * To me, this last is a clear attempt at a logical definition of free will; the first is not. One can now delve into a logical parsing of "could have done otherwise".


 * One also can go into a factual (empirical) examination of "could have done otherwise", for example, at what point in in an addict's descent into addiction has their brain's dopamine production been so compromised that they cannot exercise the will to desist? Can psychotherapy create alternative mechanisms in the brain to compensate for the damage to the brain? To exercise this program, one will have to develop criteria to evaluate the presence of will: is a patient's say-so sufficient indicator? Is there some correlate of willing to desist that can be observed without relying upon the patient's subjective observations of themselves?. The proper posing of these issues is a moving target, and while these issues can be raised here, that is all.


 * What I need from you here is some elaboration of your meaning. Brews ohare (talk) 15:59, 6 November 2012 (UTC)


 * But they disagree about whether determinism is true:
 * (Hard determinism) Some say it is
 * (Metphysical libertarianism) Some say it's not

→ Perhaps these are statements about theories in physics à la Laplace. Then they are questions about the logical implications of these theories, which can be readily assessed and shown to be misinterpretations without practical consequence. See this. Otherwise they are intended as more general factual assertions about what is "out there". A dichotomy is proposed that either everything is determined or it is not. Obvious alternatives are ignored entirely: that maybe some things are determined and others are not, or that it is presumptuous to suppose this is a provable proposition because one can never (even in principle) establish where identical circumstances appear. That is true for the weather and even for celestial dynamics.

→ In my opinion, hard determinism is a purely logical position which is empirically unprovable in principle, and so has no standing as a statement of fact about the real world. I believe plenty of literature establishing this point is out there, and so this position really deserves very little attention aside from its historical interest and a certain awe that so much blather has been written about it.

This is a good place to continue. The rest of the outline also deserves attention, but one has to start somewhere, eh? Brews ohare (talk) 15:59, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

There may be subtlety involved here: the distinction between ontology and epistemology, the difference between what a thing is and how we know it. Perhaps this difference has to be introduced? Brews ohare (talk) 16:55, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

As a point of clarification, I'm a subscriber to Model-dependent realism which has a Popper's three worlds cast - involving feedback between theory, fact, and the brain. Brews ohare (talk) 17:48, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Richardbrucebaxer: Incompatibilism does not assert the non-applicability of nomological determinism
The above assertion is made by Richardbrucebaxter in removing the phrase "Many hold that nomological determinism must be false in order for free will to be possible" and replacing it with "One can debate whether, as a matter of fact, nomological determinism actually applies". In fact, inasmuch as nomological determinism suggests (according to this article, though probably not in fact) "that the present dictates the future entirely and necessarily, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events" it seems logically irrefutable that free will is not possible if one accepts this proposition. That leaves open only the question of whether this proposition applies to reality. The original statement has some content if one agrees that nomological determinism has many varieties, including physical, psychological, religious or theological determinism, spatio-temporal (relativity theory) determinism, so one might be a bit vague about the relation of nomological discussion to free will.

I'd say this revert is perhaps too succinct.

A further change in this revert is to replace the phrase: "Positions that deny that nomological determinism is logically relevant, stressing other options, are classified as compatibilist to replace it with "Positions that deny that nomological determinism is relevant, saying that we could have free will either way, are classified as compatibilist

The primary change it would seem is to delete the adjective "logically", apparently suggesting that it is not a logical distinction at stake, but a broader consideration of relevance that is important. However, the compatibilist position is firstly a logical one, that the truth or falsity of nomological determinism is a false dilemma. If that position is accepted as one of logic (that is, there are other possible positions), it opens the door to the possibility that the real world does not obey this dichotomy and so discussion of constraints instead of discussion of nomological determinism makes sense.

The literature appears to take the view that compatibilism is the view that free will is compatible with determinism, and incompatibilism is the view that it isn't. This compatibility argument is first an argument over definitions of free will and their logical implications, and until that is settled they are not arguments over what actually applies in fact. It doesn't appear historically that this debate has taken the form of arguments over facts, like the consequences of dopamine production in the brain, but over abstractions, (for example) whether determinism is actually a provable proposition in principle given that it requires an impossible (at least if one omits theology) omniscient observer. In any event, the in-line explanation for this reversion as "Incompatibilism does not assert the non-applicability of nomological determinism" seems irrelevant to what was actually changed here.

What should be done here is not a revert, but a rewrite. Brews ohare (talk) 18:22, 15 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Brews Ohare - thanks for detailing your explanation. I have commented on sections of your reply;
 * In fact, inasmuch as nomological determinism suggests (according to this article, though probably not in fact) "that the present dictates the future entirely and necessarily, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events"
 * The whole point of Pfhorrest's (arguably unnecessary) clarification of "Determinism" with "Nomological Determinism" in the introduction was to make it absolutely clear that is the definition of determinism in this context. Besides, how can a definition change based upon fact? If we are academically rigorous about it, things become false, we don't change their definition (perhaps one could do a thesis on variation of definition based upon social/corporate consequence - particularly in the legal realm).
 * In fact, inasmuch as nomological determinism suggests "that the present dictates the future entirely and necessarily, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events" it seems logically irrefutable that free will is not possible if one accepts this proposition
 * This is not the case for compatibilists. (Perhaps less intuitive - but even this is disputed, eg see section Believing in free will)
 * That leaves open only the question of whether this proposition applies to reality.
 * Presumably you are suggesting that the proposition is not making any statement for which assumptions are not held by anyone in reality, and it is therefore irrelevant. That is certainly true if it is "logically irrefutable that free will is not possible if one accepts this proposition".
 * However, the compatibilist position is firstly a logical one, that the truth or falsity of nomological determinism is a false dilemma
 * I don't think anyone is arguing that a hypothesis, presumption, or yet-to-be-established-truth of physical "determinism" or "indeterminism" in the universe is a false dilemma (they are mutually exclusive); the application of such to free will has perhaps been considered thus.
 * Regarding the edit summary, I had limited characters and it should read "incompatibilism does not assert that FW requires the non-applicability of nomological determinism (but rather that its existence negates the possibility of FW)".
 * Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 06:37, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi guys, still don't have time for a long reply, but just for the sake of mediation: I mostly agree with what Richard is saying here in response to Brews' comments on the talk page here, but my interpretation of Brews' edits to the article was that "applies" was intended to mean "is the case", i.e. incompatibilists, though agreeing with each other that nomological determinism makes all the difference in the question of whether we have free will, then debate with each other about whether nomological determinism is true; those who say it is are Hard Determinists, those who say it's not are Metaphysical Libertarians. Compatibilists disagree with them both, in saying that that is not the important question on which the issue of free will turns at all; it could be either way and we could still have free will or not depending on other factors.
 * That's all for now. --Pfhorrest (talk) 19:25, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * It does look like we need a lot of semantic clean-up. I guess I haven't been very clear. For the record, I take the view that there are logical constructions made up of definitions and their logical consequences, like geometry, and there is the question of how to involve these constructions in a theory with application to reality, like surveying or astronomy. I think everybody here agrees with this distinction. I just want to be clear that I do too. Brews ohare (talk) 20:11, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * In this connection the words "true", "applies" and so forth are unclear unless one knows which context is in mind. So "true" might mean a logical tautology or it might mean that experimental observations support the assertion. In the case of compatibilism both meanings might be used so it is clearest if we keep the adjectives "logically" and "empirically" close at hand to keep the argument straight. Brews ohare (talk) 20:19, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Something to straighten out
It is not your responsibility to educate me, but maybe that effort will also benefit the article Free will. Here is my dilemma:

The compatibilism-incompatibilism stances don't seem to me to be the whole story. Here is a stance that I'd like to have fit into the Free will framework:


 * Some things may be determined on the basis that physical theory suggests the future is determined by the past, at least on a macroscopic level coarser than atomic theory. There are, however, two caveats in this supposition: (i) even according to theory, an omniscient observer is needed, because infinitely precise description of all details of the past and present are necessary to predict the future, and so the claim that the future is determined by the past cannot be tested, and (ii) it might be that some things escape the grasp of physical theory and cannot be presumed to be subject to such theory.


 * Given these observations, it seems a tenable hypothesis that despite determinism in the sense of physical theory, it is entirely able to co-exist alongside an hypothesis that the matters of free will lie outside its grasp.


 * One might take this view as one more version of the division of reality into separate camps where different rules apply.


 * One such view is that of Bohr, that these are two facets of reality with different descriptions necessitated by the inability verify a prediction when the observation itself affects the outcome. Thus, in his view, any observation of free will "causing" an event is not possible.

I would appreciate some rambling about how these ideas can be fit into the article. Brews ohare (talk) 01:24, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * You are referring to incompatibilist free will here. Our (in)ability to establish something as deterministic is irrelevant - all that matters is our underlying assumptions.


 * i) may be true, but one can't prove the tenets of the empirical method either
 * ii) is only possible if either a) the deterministic physical theory is incomplete, b) the physical theory is not deterministic, or c) the subject is not physical and has no physical consequence


 * You appear to have assumed a) for the next sentence - an incomplete deterministic physical theory.


 * I believe Bohr assumed b) following the Copenhagen interpretation. Yet from the quotation you added, he did not presuppose that our observations of probability in nature (apparent indeterminacy) corresponded to free will. It is possible that influence on nature could be hidden behind our inability to verify a prediction when the observation itself affects the outcome, but this is presuming that the underlying construct is indeterministic. With both a) and b) any observation of free will "causing" an event is not possible. In the case of a) then we cannot even detect/measure the indeterminacy (else the deterministic theory would have already been recognised by the scientific community as incomplete and replaced with a more accurate probabilistic theory; as is commonly accepted today).


 * Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 20:56, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Richard: I'd just like to see the landscape here. Thanks for taking a look at this.
 * I'll get back to this shortly. Brews ohare (talk) 22:18, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Richard: Let me look at your remarks here.
 * You begin with my statement (i) about an omniscient observer being an unrealizable entity, thereby placing the Laplacian notion of a deterministic universe beyond empirical test. You say this statement may be true (it appears inescapable to me if we accept the usual notions of testing), but you say (as I understand it) you can't prove empirical testing is a valid approach either. Of course, this is a question of ontology (if I've got that term correctly) and that is an elephant in the room that this entire article on Free will avoids entirely. The cogito ergo sum approach to what is real is quite at variance with empirical testing, as it places subjective observations available to the individual at a higher priority than any group knowledge. I guess divine revelation is next. For most, any interesting treatment of free will falls under the rubric of being empirically testable. Other approaches are curiosities. What do you think?


 * You next address the point (ii) that physical methods may not be appropriate to all of experience. I suspect a common view is that this situation is evolving, and one may take either the stance that eventually everything will be explained by some form of empirically verifiable theory, or not, and perhaps our notion of "empirically verifiable" will evolve too. How do you see it?


 * Your interpret Bohr as adopting a nondeterministic view of nature. Of course, the probabilistic formulation of atomic physics was his forté, but when it comes to free will I interpret his remarks as less clear-cut. Subjective observations of one's interior mental life are used in some psychological methods, and they are notoriously capricious: the method of observation markedly affects what is observed. I take Bohr's reservations about observing free will in general terms to be along these lines, although he also detailed his views that an attempt to examine mental events at an atomic scale defied any possible scheme of measurement. What do you think? Brews ohare (talk) 13:58, 24 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Part of this discussion could assess the idea of Model-dependent realism, the notion that reality is a mosaic, a Venn diagram, an assembly of overlapping areas, each area with its own "reality" and vocabulary, mutually translatable one to the other in regions of overlap, but outside this overlap having no necessary connection. So a probabilistic view of reality can be established at atomic dimensions for small numbers of atoms, which overlaps a statistical mechanics for ensembles of many atoms, which overlaps a thermodynamics for huge systems of gases, solids and liquids. How does this relate to neuroscience and free will? Does neuroscience overlap mental phenomena but not include all of it? Is its vocabulary translatable to that of mental activity in limited arenas like addiction, but has no bearing upon free will in broader terms? What does the literature say? Brews ohare (talk) 14:38, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Queries to Richardbrucebaxter
Below I'll quote the comments by Richardbrucebaxter so I can intersperse some clarifications of my words. I hope further commentary will be forthcoming. Here are the comments and the interspersed clarifications:
 * Brews Ohare - thanks for detailing your explanation. I have commented on sections of your reply;
 * In fact, inasmuch as nomological determinism suggests (according to this article, though probably not in fact) "that the present dictates the future entirely and necessarily, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events"
 * The whole point of Pfhorrest's (arguably unnecessary) clarification of "Determinism" with "Nomological Determinism" in the introduction was to make it absolutely clear that is the definition of determinism in this context. Besides, how can a definition change based upon fact? If we are academically rigorous about it, things become false, we don't change their definition (perhaps one could do a thesis on variation of definition based upon social/corporate consequence - particularly in the legal realm).


 * Richardbrucebaxter: I would not suggest that 'a definition can change based upon fact'; my suggestion here is that this definition of nomological determinism is too narrow to cover its actual usage in some discussions of nomological determinism. Perhaps the defintion provided is actually for ontological determinism? Brews ohare (talk) 16:44, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Brews Ohare: the definition is a standard understanding of determinism ("that the present dictates the future entirely and necessarily... etc"), and certainly with respect to how it is understood for incompatibilism. The use of "nomological determinism" may possibly be in error - Pfhorrest could comment further perhaps if he has time, though not what it is trying to represent here. Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 00:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * In fact, inasmuch as nomological determinism suggests "that the present dictates the future entirely and necessarily, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events" it seems logically irrefutable that free will is not possible if one accepts this proposition
 * This is not the case for compatibilists. (Perhaps less intuitive - but even this is disputed, eg see section Believing in free will)


 * Richardbrucebaxter: If "every occurrence results inevitably from prior events" is viewed as an axiom, then it is logically irrefutable that free will is not consistent with this axiom. Compatibilists do not argue this point. What they argue is that this axiom is inapplicable to reality. For example, this. Brews ohare (talk) 17:28, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Brews Ohare: This is not a good example of compatibilism - a philosophy that relies upon the inability to establish (neurological) determinism sounds a lot like incompatibilism. Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 00:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Richardbrucebaxter: Perhaps not all compatibilists make this argument. It seems some wish to redefine free will so it is logically compatible with strict determinism (Dennett?), a possible approach, but convoluted if one wants consistency with the common-sense understanding of "free will". See Harris "They trade a psychological fact - the subjective experience of being a conscious agent - for a conceptual understanding of ourselves as persons." Brews ohare (talk) 17:05, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Brews Ohare: Not all compatibilists (if any) would argue that that determinism as currently defined in the introduction is a threat to the validity of such an experience (of being a conscious agent). Again, it may come down in no small part to the way one separates their mind from their body, and this operation can even be influenced experimentally - see again section believing in free will. Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 00:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * That leaves open only the question of whether this proposition applies to reality.
 * Presumably you are suggesting that the proposition is not making any statement for which assumptions are not held by anyone in reality, and it is therefore irrelevant. That is certainly true if it is "logically irrefutable that free will is not possible if one accepts this proposition".


 * Richardbrucebaxter: I can't untangle this sentence. Brews ohare (talk) 16:44, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Brews Ohare: It is better just to say a proposition is irrelevant to begin with (I was attempting to find a correct meaning for "applies to reality": basically if a statement is implying/"assuming" something held by everyone, then it draws an obvious conclusion and so cannot possibly distinguish between two commonly held opinions [regarding the supposed relevance of the proposition to their model of free will] - this is what I gather you were arguing). Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 00:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * However, the compatibilist position is firstly a logical one, that the truth or falsity of nomological determinism is a false dilemma
 * I don't think anyone is arguing that a hypothesis, presumption, or yet-to-be-established-truth of physical "determinism" or "indeterminism" in the universe is a false dilemma (they are mutually exclusive); the application of such to free will has perhaps been considered thus.


 * Richardbrucebaxter: The false dilemma is the supposition that the universe of logical alternatives is that either everything is determined or it is not. This dilemma is false because of the word "everything", which limits choice to exclude a formulation like "some things are determined and some things are not". An even more open formulation is that "some things are constrained and some are not." I'd like to hear more from you on the technicalities of this point. Brews ohare (talk) 16:44, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Brews Ohare: I will ignore the use of "nomological determinism" here but rather focus on the definition provided in the introduction (see above). It is clear that physical determinism (which is what is claimed as incompatible with free will for incompatibilism) implies that everything physical is determined on some level. One is free to deny physicalism here, however it is not going to help as for non-physical objects to have any influence on the construct that construct cannot be deterministic. Considering the subject is free will, the ability to influence physical reality is rather important for a non physical object. But it is unclear what you are actually implying here - is it perhaps that a deterministic universe can contain undetermined events? Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 00:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Regarding the edit summary, I had limited characters and it should read "incompatibilism does not assert that FW requires the non-applicability of nomological determinism (but rather that its existence negates the possibility of FW)".
 * Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 06:37, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps with these clarification we agree? Brews ohare (talk) 16:44, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I am not so sure... Is it possible you have tried to unravel "nomological determinism"? But I don't understand why you would be attempting to do this based upon when it was introduced. But I thank you for your additional clarifications. Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 00:38, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Note I have done some research into nomological determinism, and its usage seems very appropriate for this article (/incompatibilism). If there are any problems with it, then the article on determinism should be a first point of concern. Personally, if I thought clarification was required, I would have opted for "physical determinism" or "causal determinism", as it is more direct in its description (but that is not what has been chosen in this reference). A second concern was whether "that the present dictates the future entirely and necessarily, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events" is representative of nomological determinism (or is too narrow). I can't see any problems with this either - although the explication of "necessarily" and "inevitably" doesn't seem to add meaning to the article. Cheers - Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 07:26, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

The indentation in the above is confusing so I'm not always sure who's saying what, so I'm going to reply to everything down here for now. If you guys could could tidy it up so that your responses are always exactly one colon deeper than the section you're responding to, including evenly indenting each paragraph of a multi-paragraph response, that would help a lot.

Anyway, what I labelled "nomological determinism" has several common names in the field, and James' ontological determinism is pretty much the same thing. It is the proposition that everything is completely determined by whatever exists at any given time (hence the "onto", 'being') plus whatever the laws of nature are (hence the "nomo", 'law'). Given the total state of the universe at any one time, and the laws of the universe, the total state of the universe at any other time is logically entailed.

A similar kind of determinism, "logical determinism", holds merely that every possible question about anything at any time has an answer which is equally true at every other time; including, notably, that questions about the future, like "what am I going to eat for breakfast tomorrow?", all have answers which are already true now, and have always been true. This is only different in that it doesn't entail that you will do whatever you will do because of how things are now plus the laws of nature (moments might not necessarily succeed each other in any kind of law-like fashion), but it still entails that whatever you are going to do, there is already a fact which is true right now about that, before you do it or even decide to do it. (This distinction might be a concern, for instance, if there is a God who knows the entire future, but who also intervenes in history with miracles, meaning that you couldn't tell the future from the present because God might intervene along the way, but that God still knows exactly what's going to happen because he knows what he's going to do, too -- which, yes, raises interesting questions about God's free will, but that would be a long irrelevant tangent here).

I'm not sure off the top of my head if there's an all-encompassing technical term which captures both of these, but when people discussing the incompatibilist sense of free will just say "determinism" without qualifiers, it is pretty universally understood that this is what they mean. The past, present, and future are all set in stone. Anything that ever happens was always going to happen. (But I'm notably not saying "and there's nothing you can do about it". That would be fatalism. The important difference from fatalism is that whatever will happen in the future will happen in part because of whatever you do about it, but that there has always already been a fact about what you will do, a fact which might or might not be entailed by the past and the laws of nature but which either way has always been true).

Anyway. Yes, there are plenty of possible steps in between the above (lets just call it "D") and "the universe is completely and totally random with no patterns or laws to its events". But the dichotomy between metaphysical libertarianism and hard determinism is not a dichotomy between those two extremes, and compatibilism isn't defined by falling somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. The dichotomy between the two mainstream incompatibilist positions is one over the question of whether "D" is true or not. Metaphysical libertarians could fall anywhere on that spectrum of possibilities except the extreme at one end of it (where "D" is), though they usually fall closer to that end than the other (most libertarians will agree that the universe as a whole behaves in a fairly predictable and determinate way, just that some parts -- namely people -- do not). It doesn't matter that proving or disproving "D" may be impractical or even impossible, that's never stopped people from speculating and arguing about their speculations before. (And both medieval theology and modern physics gave them some ammunition to throw at each other on this matter).

Both of those positions are incompatibilists because they agree that if "D" is true, then the statement "free will exists" (lets call that proposition "F") cannot be true. They try to argue from the very definition of free will that F and D are logically incompatible. This is where issues of definition come up, and where compatibilists come in, and why compatibilists are not just somewhere else on that spectrum of "how much determinism is there". Compatibilists say, in one way or another, that the definition of free will that incompatibilists are using is a faulty one that does not track with our ordinary usage of the term, and they try to show that we usually say people have free will or not in this or that circumstance based on considerations wholly other than "could we, in theory, have calculated what they were going to do centuries ago?". They say that it doesn't matter whether or not D is true -- the truth of F hinges on something else completely, and it is a confused understanding of what "free will" means which leads people to think there is a dichotomy between it and determinism.

So incompatibilists argue amongst each other over the factuality of D, and agree on the definition of F; meanwhile, compatibilists argue amongst each other and against incompatibilists over the definition of F, and don't care about the factuality of D. And the approaches that different compatibilists take are are as radically different from each other as any of them are from incompatibilism.

Some compatibilists, like Dennett, argue that it doesn't matter whether or not things are strictly determined, but that it does matter whether or not we can determine them, in the sense of predicting them. He argues that, even setting aside the huge issues of somehow knowing the complete state of the universe at any given moment and knowing the true fundamental laws of nature, even if we could do those implausibly difficult things somehow, mathematical chaos and complexity makes it impossible even in principle to calculate precisely what will happen in the future faster than it actually happens; so complex systems like people are fundamentally unpredictable, even if they are strictly determined, and that's "good enough" for free will in a sense very similar to the incompatibilist one.

Other, mostly older, compatibilists, like Hobbes, argue that free will is nothing more than freedom of a more familiar sort, like what we would now call freedom of action. You can see most clearly here the way in which compatibilists completely sidestep the issue of determinism. Brews, surely you would agree that even if every action everybody will ever take has always been fixed in stone since the dawn of time, there is still a sense in which we can talk about whether someone has freedom of action, yes? They are unrestrained, and so free to do whatever they want. There may be a fact about what they will want, and whether they will be free to do it, and so whether or not they will do it; but it still makes sense to ask "in the determined future, will they be free to do this?", in the sense of asking "will they be restrained and prevented from doing what they want?". There might be a determined answer to that question, but if we took "free will" to mean, as Hobbes did, freedom of action, then there would be a determined answer to whether or not the person in question would have free will at some time in the future. Stick that in your incompatibilist pipe and smoke it. (That's just friendly rhetoric there, no hostility intended).

Still other, more recent, compatibilists, like Frankfurt, argue that free will is a functional ability of actors, and so compatible with determinism in the same way that Hobbes' definition is, but something much more subtle than just freedom of action. Freedom of action is the ability to do what you want to do. Your will is whatever 'want' you have which moves you to do whatever you do. Freedom of will is then the ability to will what you want to will; to exercise control over which of your wants are effective in moving you to act. In programming terms, it's the ability to reprogram yourself. In broader cybernetics terms, it's a feedback loop or a control mechanism. Whether or not you have such a mechanism functioning in you, and thus whether you have free will, is a physical fact about you, just like whether you are in chains and thus have freedom of action is a physical fact about you. Those facts, and the other facts which feed into that system and the facts about your actions which are the output of it, may have always been set in stone since the dawn of time; but nevertheless if you do in fact have such a mechanism functioning in you, you have free will by this definition, even if you having free will was determined.

That last sense seems to be the operational definition of free will which most people working in the various physical sciences operate under. Neurologists and biologists looking at whether or not the human brain has nerve pathways that would function as such a mechanism, or whether brain structure is malleable enough for such a mechanism to even possibly exist in it; psychologists and sociologists looking at whether people's intentions to change their patterns of behavior can be effective on changing their behavior, or if all such changes in behavior have to come from outside conditioning (if the brain is even malleable enough to allow for any such change at all). All of these areas of investigation are asking what determines (i.e. influences, directs) a person's behavior, under the assumption that the universe is at least macroscopically law-like and deterministic enough for such causal relations to be discovered, and that if a person's behavior is determined entirely by some particular mechanism (like genetics or social conditioning) then they don't have free will, while if it's determined some other way (like some such feedback loop or control mechanism) then they do or at least could have free will. These different possibilities are all called different types of "determinism" (biological, cultural, psychological, etc), but nobody is asking whether or not the whole universe is completely deterministic or even "how deterministic" it is (though I think some neurologists are asking how much microscopic randomness gets chaotically amplified by the brain, apparently operating under an incompatibilist definition of free will there). They're asking whether certain specific things causally determine certain specific other things, which is not a question about whether "determinism" simpliciter is true or not at all.

I'm not really sure where I was going with this from here when I started, so I'm going to stop now, but I hope this helps clear at least some things up. Oh, and to tie this back to my suggestions for the article: I was suggesting that we divide it up into sections for each different definition of free will. Incompatibilism would all fall under one such definition, and in that section would be not only the incompatibilist philosophical arguments for why that is the right definition of free will that tracks our ordinary usage, but also discussion from physics and theology about whether or not determinism is factually true. Another section would discuss views like Dennett's, that it's predictability, not determinism, which threatens free will. Another section would discuss the classic compatibilism of Hobbes et al, and among the criticisms of that would be that freedom of action and freedom of will mean different things. Then another section would discuss the modern compatibilism of Frankfurt et al, and most of the science topics would go under there as they seem to take that as their operational definition while they investigate factual issues of biological, cultural, and psychological determinism, etc. --Pfhorrest (talk) 08:36, 20 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks again for the excellent overview Pfhorrest - it is all very reasonable. I think you have a good handle on the various forms of free will, and it would make sense to lay them out separately like you have discussed here (and in your diagram). I will add my comments to your proposed layout above (your nested list in talk section Pfhorrest's flowchart). Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 22:41, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Pfhorrest's comments

 * Pfhorrest: Thanks for the discussion. It's pretty long, and I'd like to take up a few points I found germane to my own questions on this issue.
 * "So incompatibilists argue amongst each other over the factuality of D, and agree on the definition of F; meanwhile, compatibilists argue amongst each other and against incompatibilists over the definition of F, and don't care about the factuality of D."
 * 1.) So it is incompatibilist to suggest that "D" is not factual. On that basis is it incompatibilism to point out that physics requires omniscience to verify "D" even within its peculiar domain, so while "D" might be true of the universe, that proposition is not testable. The most that can be tested in practice is to predict events within some error bar of uncertainty, an error bar that is enormous in fields like weather prediction, and not so good for predicting asteroid behavior either (the good old insoluble many-body problem). Thus, it would seem, those that hold "D" to be factual are way out on a limb, much further than their willingness to argue would suggest.
 * →From some standpoints, the "factuality of D" being a statement without consequences, it's not worth discussing. Brews ohare (talk) 16:08, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Many compatibilists might generally be inclined to agree with you, but nevertheless people do still discuss it. It's like theism vs atheism: the question at hand between them may be an unscientific one, both statements may be unverifiable and unfalsifiable, nevertheless people do take positions on it, and those positions are notable. --Pfhorrest (talk) 09:26, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * 2.) From Bohr's standpoint, cause and effect can be established only to the degree that the "effect" can be separated from the "cause". So where observation of a phenomenon severely disturbs the phenomenon under observation, cause and effect become inseparable. He's on solid ground at an atomic level. However, he says that observing mental causation (free will) is not possible for this reason. Thus it is not that "D" is not factual but that "D" is not a useful concept in some arenas. Would you place the discussion of applicability of the terms "cause" and "effect" under the "arguments over the definition of free will" camp, that is, as a branch of compatibilism?
 * 3.) Other authors also suggest "cause" and "effect" need re-examination in this context. Is it useful to classify discussions of cause and effect under "compatibilism".
 * 4.) Isn't "compatibilism" departing from any useful distinction and becoming an et cetera category?
 * 5.) As you suggest, it would be a more useful structure for the article to build it around definitions of free will than to stick it in its present narrow confines of determinism vs. everything else. That organization might contain more topics than you have itemized. Brews ohare (talk) 15:50, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * If by that you mean it not a fact, i.e. that it is false, then it's incompatibilist to appeal to that (or its negation) in an argument about free will. A compatibilist could still talk about determinism being true or not completely outside the context of free will, like
 * → I intended your meaning of "factual" in the quote from you, which I took as meaning D "having empirical validity", as opposed to being only an hypothesis about reality. I take your remark as a narrowing of incompatibilism to the position that "D having empirical validity is pertinent to a discussion of free will". On the other hand, a compatibilist cannot discuss this point in the context of free will, but could discuss it in other domains. So I am confused that a compatibilist can address the, but should they proceed from such a discussion in a broad subject domain to suggest it has bearing upon "free will" they suddenly become incompatibilists. That change of labels depending upon the breadth of the topic is very confusing to me. Brews ohare (talk) 16:19, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying that talking about it or not changes how they are labelled necessarily, I'm just saying it's not the kind of thing people fitting such labels are likely to talk about. A compatibilist by definition says that the truth or falsity of "D" has no bearing on the truth or falsity of "F". A compatibilist might for other reasons want to discuss the truth or falsity of "D", but seeing as they hold it to have no bearing on the truth or falsity of "F", they wouldn't be wont to infer anything about the latter from the former. If someone we didn't know how to label was talking about "D" (perhaps about the difficulties in determining the truth or falsity of "D") and drawing some conclusions about "F" (or what we can or cannot know about "F", etc), then that would make us think they were an incompatibilist, because they would appear by such comments to believe that "D" did have some bearing on "F". If they had claimed to be a compatibilist and then did that, that would suggest that there was some confusion either about what they mean by the label or what they mean by the inference. --Pfhorrest (talk) 09:26, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * → → Got it. Thanks. However, I believe your explanation hardens my opinion that the "compatibilist"-"incompatibilist" designation does more to confuse matters than to illuminate important distinctions. The matter of importance (IMO) is what constraints act upon a human agent facing specific inputs, and how their response is affected by pre-conditioning. Brews ohare (talk) 16:14, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * But if by that you mean that "D" is not a question of fact at all, then that's not really an option -- "D" is defined entirely as a question of fact. It may be an impossible-to-answer question, but it's still a question of fact, not a question of some logical definition. We don't get to define whether the universe is deterministic, just what determinism is.
 * → I don't understand this remark.My view is that the definition of "D" is the position that "the past and present determine the future". The question of whether "D" has empirical validity is entirely a separate matter. Is that what you are saying too? Brews ohare (talk) 16:19, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, pretty much. I was just making sure to be clear whether you meant "factual" as opposed to something like "definitional" (i.e. as "pertaining to questions of fact"), or "factual" as opposed to "false" (i.e. as "in fact"). It seems you meant the latter, as did I, so we are clear here I think. --Pfhorrest (talk) 09:26, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Like I said, that never stopped anybody from arguing about anything. Besides which, most of the libertarian vs determinist stuff stems from either older, mechanistic theories of physics (determinists arguing that it appears that every fundamental interaction is a deterministic, mechanical event like billiard balls clacking together, and inferring from that that the whole universe must be like a huge deterministic machine),
 * → Pfhorrest: This is the argument of Laplace requiring an omniscient observer. It is empirically untestable, being an extrapolation of classical physics beyond anything empirically verifiable, even in principle. So as a basis for asserting "D" has empirical validity, it is invalid. Brews ohare (talk) 16:19, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * See above about theism vs atheism. People argue for these positions and those arguments are notable, but I'm not saying anything about whether they are sound arguments or not. --Pfhorrest (talk) 09:26, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * or from even older theological issues (received doctrine was that God knows everything, which implies that determinism is true). I'm not familiar with anyone in modern times giving philosophical arguments that determinism must be true -- our best current physics suggests it's not. The only argument still going on is about whether or not that has anything to do with free will.
 * → What is this continuing argument about? Because "D" is an empirically unprovable assertion, any argument about the pertinence of "D" to free will places that particular discussion of "free will" in the realm of things empirically unprovable, that is, the realm not only of theory but of theories without consequence. Free will may indeed be empirically unprovable, but that doesn't mean that "D" is pertinent because, of course, not every unprovable statement is applicable to free will. Is this how you would frame the "argument still going on"? Brews ohare (talk) 16:19, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The contemporary argument essentially stems from Peter van Inwagen's "Essay on Free Will", which is where the term "incompatibilism" was coined and where that position was revitalized in modern philosophical circles. (Throughout the modern era compatibilism of one variety or another had dominated philosophical thought on free will). Basically, Van Inwagen presented an argument appealing to people's intuitions about what free will means, and attempting to logically show that if determinism was true it would run afoul of that intuitive understanding of free will. He also boiled down and pretty much accepted a common compatibilist argument that randomness undermines freedom and so determinism is necessary for free will. Between the two of those he ends up more or less a hard incompatibilist, concluding that any way you slice it, D or not-D, F must consequently be false. So he's not really concerned about whether D or not-D, but he does think D (and its negation) have a lot of bearing on F.
 * In his wake, people like Harry Frankfurt have tried to argue that the concept of free will he appeals to is malformed, and that free will properly understood has nothing to do with D vs not-D, but is rather a functional matter to be investigated case-by-case, psychologically, neurologically, etc. That's pretty much where the argument stands today (or last I've heard), with Van Inwagen and Frankfurt as figureheads of the incompatibilist-compatibilist debate. Nobody's really arguing about D or not-D anymore (not professionally at least; but go to any campus philosophy club and listen to the freshmen talk about their favorite subject, it's usually this and centers around libertarianism vs determinism with the occasional bright student arguing compatibilism or hard incompatibilism like the pros).
 * → → Thanks for this outline. Very helpful. You don't spell out why D or not-D is not an issue anymore. My argument for why it is not a reason for debate is that it is like arguing over whether fairies can fly. It is a debate for the sake of debate about something that is demonstrably meaningless to human experience. I guess I am a Frankfurtian, eh? Brews ohare (talk) 15:59, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * As far as I'm aware the reason why D or not-D is not an issue (in academia) anymore is that during the modern era (i.e. during the reign of classical, Newtonian physics) most of the educated intellectuals were "soft determinists", compatibilists holding that nomological determinism was true but that that didn't mean we had to throw away all our concepts of free will and everything that rides on them (like moral responsibility). Basically the compatibilists won in the academic arena, and intellectuals for the most part stopped caring whether or not determinism was true when it came to free will (though they generally held that it was true, until quantum mechanics raised issues with that -- even Einstein fought vigorously against admitting the possibility of indeterminism, for reasons entirely unrelated to free will, viz. the famous "God does not play dice" quote).
 * As for arguing over whether fairies can fly, like I said earlier it's like arguments about theism vs atheism: whatever we personally think of the merits of the argument, for encyclopedic purposes it is certainly notable that there is an argument taking place. You are sounding more and more like a Frankfurtian compatibilist, and as one myself I would be happy to just agree "yeah incompatibilism is nonsense, lets not even worry about it" in a personal discussion. But for the purposes of the article here, we can't be so dismissive of incompatibilism because it is hugely notably not only historically and popularly but it is still a live issue discussed by prominent academics today. --Pfhorrest (talk) 21:49, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * This might be the starting point or motivator for compatibilism of some variety, but it might also be taken, together with adherence to an incompatibilist definition of free will, to the conclusion that the question of free will is not worth discussing.
 * Same as above. Bohr's concerns sound like a plausible starting point or motivator for something like Dennett's variety of compatibilism ("even if it is deterministic, it's still unpredictable because observing it changes it, and that's good enough"). But in and of itself it doesn't necessarily fall into one position on free will or another.
 * If they are discussing that in a context of the incompatibilist definition of free will not making sense (because it hinges on a poorly defined concept of cause and effect or such), then yes. Otherwise, no, and I wouldn't see how it could be related to free will at all in that case.
 * → I don't know how to classify these discussions. Maybe you can help here? For instance, one such school of thought takes the view that the ordinary conception of "cause" and "effect" is clear only for rather simple systems, and for complex nonlinear feedback systems like the brain, "cause" and "effect" are not useful concepts and will not be used in an advanced theory of such systems. I'm just guessing that the idea is that the response of such a system to external input is not certain because the system has some internal autonomy in the way it assesses the meaning of these inputs. The connection to free will is the bald assertion that some correlate of "free will" will appear in this advanced theory, but divorced from at least the everyday notions of "cause" and "effect". Another school takes the view that the common definitions of "cause" and "effect" are too constrained, and some older, more general definitions should be reinstated. Where do such arguments fit in (beyond the label of pure speculation)? The applicability to free will is simply this: the assertion is made that mental events can cause physical ones if the definition of cause is understood correctly. Then free will can exist if the definition of cause is considered carefully. Brews ohare (talk) 16:25, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That position doesn't seem to say anything either for or against nomological determinism, or for or against its relevance to free will, so I don't see a way to categorize it as either compatibilist or incompatibilist (by which I mean, someone who holds that position could fall into either camp; the position doesn't seem to be a position on the issue which divides them). It seems like someone holding to such a position would still agree that if nomological determinism were true, then a brain placed in given starting conditions and given certain incomes would still output the same behavior every time, and that if nomological determinism were false then they it wouldn't necessarily do so; it's just defining causation in a non-necessitarian way, saying that even if D were true, it wouldn't be right to say that the inputs "caused" the outputs. If they go on to conclude from that that free will is possible even in a nomologically deterministic universe, then that would make them a kind of compatibilist, probably along the lines of Dennett (using a definition of free will very similar to, but subtly different from, the incompatibilist one). --09:26, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * → → I'd guess the argument is that  "a brain placed in given starting conditions and given certain inputs would still output the same behavior every time" is a non-statement, that is, it is equivalent to saying "if fairies existed, they could fly". The preconditions "a brain placed in given starting conditions", exist only in the imagination and cannot be realized even in principle. So one can have it any way you want:  "a brain placed in given starting conditions and given certain inputs will not output the same behavior every time" is equally unverifiable. Just to elaborate, if the same brain were given the same inputs at two different times, one could argue the brain was not "the same" because it learned something. If two identical brains were presented with the same inputs, they might not actually be identical, or their "sameness" might be established by the very fact that they have the same response to some repertoire of inputs. Then saying they are the "same" brain and exhibit the same outputs, begs the question. If they don't respond the same, one adds the non-compliant input to the repertoire defining "same brain". Nominological determinism is entertainment, not philosophy.  Brews ohare (talk) 15:38, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That's fine for your own take on the issue, but since there are notable people who disagree we can't be so dismissive in the article's own voice. --Pfhorrest (talk) 21:49, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That would be my personal stance, but historically the definition used by incompatibilists has been so prominent (and the two main incompatibilist positions seen as so exhaustive of the possibilities) that the field is divided between "incompatibilists, and all those other positions who disagree with them". --Pfhorrest (talk) 23:39, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * → I'd hazard that a reorganization of the article should avoid this emphasis except as an historical observation. Would you agree? Personally, I find the incompatibilist-compatibilist framework confusing as well as outdated. Brews ohare (talk) 16:19, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it's still important to note that divide in the lede, just because that is the dominant framework out there in the professional philosophical world, and it seems to track an important aspect of the lay understanding of free will too. The predominant view among the unwashed masses appears to be some form of metaphysical libertarianism; people with a little bit of education start to dismiss that as magical voodoo thinking and become hard determinists; and it's only when you get to significantly well-educated people that you get people rejecting that dichotomy (compatibilism) or saying "we're screwed either way" (hard incompatibilism). So I like the lede structure of saying (roughly) "free will is freedom from... something. Most people say it's this (incompatibilists), and then argue whether we are free from that (libertarians) or not (determinists). Other people say it's not that, but something else entirely (compatibilists), and then argue about what else it is, and when we might or might not be free of that." As for structuring the body of the article, I think it will be enough just to have the incompatibilist section first; I would be happy to break compatibilism out of its bubble and have different sections for all the different compatibilist concepts of free will instead of lumping them all together in one supersection. --Pfhorrest (talk) 09:26, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * → → I'd guess the argument is that  "a brain placed in given starting conditions and given certain inputs would still output the same behavior every time" is a non-statement, that is, it is equivalent to saying "if fairies existed, they could fly". The preconditions "a brain placed in given starting conditions", exist only in the imagination and cannot be realized even in principle. So one can have it any way you want:  "a brain placed in given starting conditions and given certain inputs will not output the same behavior every time" is equally unverifiable. Just to elaborate, if the same brain were given the same inputs at two different times, one could argue the brain was not "the same" because it learned something. If two identical brains were presented with the same inputs, they might not actually be identical, or their "sameness" might be established by the very fact that they have the same response to some repertoire of inputs. Then saying they are the "same" brain and exhibit the same outputs, begs the question. If they don't respond the same, one adds the non-compliant input to the repertoire defining "same brain". Nominological determinism is entertainment, not philosophy.  Brews ohare (talk) 15:38, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That's fine for your own take on the issue, but since there are notable people who disagree we can't be so dismissive in the article's own voice. --Pfhorrest (talk) 21:49, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * That would be my personal stance, but historically the definition used by incompatibilists has been so prominent (and the two main incompatibilist positions seen as so exhaustive of the possibilities) that the field is divided between "incompatibilists, and all those other positions who disagree with them". --Pfhorrest (talk) 23:39, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
 * → I'd hazard that a reorganization of the article should avoid this emphasis except as an historical observation. Would you agree? Personally, I find the incompatibilist-compatibilist framework confusing as well as outdated. Brews ohare (talk) 16:19, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it's still important to note that divide in the lede, just because that is the dominant framework out there in the professional philosophical world, and it seems to track an important aspect of the lay understanding of free will too. The predominant view among the unwashed masses appears to be some form of metaphysical libertarianism; people with a little bit of education start to dismiss that as magical voodoo thinking and become hard determinists; and it's only when you get to significantly well-educated people that you get people rejecting that dichotomy (compatibilism) or saying "we're screwed either way" (hard incompatibilism). So I like the lede structure of saying (roughly) "free will is freedom from... something. Most people say it's this (incompatibilists), and then argue whether we are free from that (libertarians) or not (determinists). Other people say it's not that, but something else entirely (compatibilists), and then argue about what else it is, and when we might or might not be free of that." As for structuring the body of the article, I think it will be enough just to have the incompatibilist section first; I would be happy to break compatibilism out of its bubble and have different sections for all the different compatibilist concepts of free will instead of lumping them all together in one supersection. --Pfhorrest (talk) 09:26, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I think it's still important to note that divide in the lede, just because that is the dominant framework out there in the professional philosophical world, and it seems to track an important aspect of the lay understanding of free will too. The predominant view among the unwashed masses appears to be some form of metaphysical libertarianism; people with a little bit of education start to dismiss that as magical voodoo thinking and become hard determinists; and it's only when you get to significantly well-educated people that you get people rejecting that dichotomy (compatibilism) or saying "we're screwed either way" (hard incompatibilism). So I like the lede structure of saying (roughly) "free will is freedom from... something. Most people say it's this (incompatibilists), and then argue whether we are free from that (libertarians) or not (determinists). Other people say it's not that, but something else entirely (compatibilists), and then argue about what else it is, and when we might or might not be free of that." As for structuring the body of the article, I think it will be enough just to have the incompatibilist section first; I would be happy to break compatibilism out of its bubble and have different sections for all the different compatibilist concepts of free will instead of lumping them all together in one supersection. --Pfhorrest (talk) 09:26, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

22 November 2012 edits
Note I have issues with almost all of the content of these edits:
 * Incompatibilism places free will at odds with a deterministic universe.

This is OK, but is not what this paragraph is explaining.
 * It is an assertion of the incompatibility of one's presumably distinct experience of will and a (determined) physical reality. Although substance dualism offers such a distinction, a less extreme form of naturalism known as non-reductive physicalism may also suffice.

This doesn't make any sense anymore - "such a distinction" is now referring to a subset of the preceeding sentence.
 * ...that some mental states are correlated with some neurological states

This is not what (non-reductive) physicalism supposes.
 * One such construction suggests the emergence of mental properties accompanying physical properties

This rewording is correct, but confusing - as more than one philosophical model of mind presupposes emergence of mental properties.
 * implying mental states are cooperative system-wide responses, best understood on a global basis rather than one of individual component

This is an interesting interpretation... but requires a reference (or two).
 * It is said that mental events supervene over physical events, which some say is simply an association, and some view as a causal relationship

I am not sure the purpose of stating this. The definition of supervenience is association in this context - and it is only referring to one construction of non-reductive physicalism anyway.
 * ''Non-reductive physicalism can therefore be categorized either as property dualism or as monism.

It is best not to presuppose its correct categorisation in the article (as some will debate against classification as either - there is more than one formulation of non-reductive physicalism). This sentence also implies that epiphenomalism is a form of non-reductive physicalism - which it is not - but rather it is a form of property dualism (and/or substance dualism according to Heligan).'' Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 19:52, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Richardbrucebaxter: I'd like to propose to you that the edits you have reverted are an attempt to make this paragraph understandable to a wide audience that most probably has only a foggy notion if any about technical jargon. With that in mind, reversion of changes is really not a helpful response: what would be helpful would be a rewording. It isn't really about explaining matters for the versed, but for the unversed. So let's look at one of these reversions you mention above.
 * → This statement is taken from the article incompatibilism and is intended to remind the reader what this is. That is completely unnecessary for you, but the first-time reader might appreciate a reminder as they already have swimming around in their minds almost a dozen technical terms they never saw before they began to read this article, and probably couldn't answer a pop quiz about which is which.
 * Following your reversion, this sentence is replaced with "Incompatibilism requires a distinction between the mental and the physical, being a commentary on the incompatibility of (determined) physical reality and one's presumably distinct experience of will."
 * This lengthy sentence, instead of reminding us what incompatbilism is, says what it "requires", suggesting a broader content, leaving the reader wandering off to wonder just what has been omitted. It then states that incompatibilsm holds that "physical reality" is incompatible with "one's experience" of will. We are thereby led to wonder if this observation is a nonsequitor held by a faction called "incompatibilists", or some logical consequence of the earlier statement about what incompatibilism requires. They also are wondering if "one's experience of will" is actually "free will" or how it is different.
 * However you view the reaction to this sentence, my point here is that instead of reverting the simple statement back to this mucky original, an attempt should be made to fix this thing to say whatever it is it really wants to say, instead of leaving the reader feeling there's a lot more mud out there that isn't being cleaned up.
 * IMO the entire paragraph now reading as follows:
 * Incompatibilism requires a distinction between the mental and the physical, being a commentary on the incompatibility of (determined) physical reality and one's presumably distinct experience of will. Although substance dualism offers such a distinction, a less extreme form of naturalism known as non-reductive physicalism may also suffice. Although one might suppose that mental states and neurological states are different in kind, that does not rule out the possibility that mental states correspond to neurological states. Under non-reductive physicalism, although physical states do cause mental states, they are not ontologically reducible to them. In one such construction, mental events supervene on physical events, describing the emergence of mental properties as correspondent to physical properties. This relationship is known as causal reducibility. Non-reductive physicalism is therefore often categorised as property dualism rather than monism, yet other types of property dualism do not adhere to the causal reducibility of mental states - such as epiphenomenalism.
 * should be discarded, and if there is anything here that really helps to understand the section The mind-body problem it should be restated. In my mind the potentially useful part of this paragraph is that about mental events as a form of emergence, and probably it should introduce what is stated in the section Determinism and emergent behavior. The rest of this paragraph has as its main point the attempt to show that the preceding description of the mind-body problem can be re-expressed in terms of jargon like "incompatibilism", "non-reductive physicalism", "monism" and "substance dualism", which IMO requires first an essay describing why this is a useful thing to do. I haven't any confidence that it is. Brews ohare (talk) 17:34, 23 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I see that this paragraph has come up before here and here. Garamond Lethe has agreed that this paragraph is undoubtedly murky. But all attempts to change it have been reverted without any improvement. What can be done here? Brews ohare (talk) 14:25, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I see that this paragraph has come up before here and here. Garamond Lethe has agreed that this paragraph is undoubtedly murky. But all attempts to change it have been reverted without any improvement. What can be done here? Brews ohare (talk) 14:25, 24 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Brews you need to conduct a proper edit history - and am surprised this has escaped your memory. The paragraph has already been revised with respect to Garamond's comments, taking into account some of your suggested text stating the basics (eg "Although one might suppose that mental states and neurological states are different in kind, that does not rule out the possibility that mental states correspond to neurological states"), including the splitting up of longer sentences. There is at least one artefact from third party attempts to modify it (edit 20:54, 30 September 2012‎ by 75.2.130.83) - which introduced a grammatical ambiguity I have corrected at this time. As stated previously, unless mind-body problem content is linked to free will, then it is not relevant. I am certainly not going to trade on accuracy (accepting for example your 22 November edit), and would question the omission of this assumption made by incompatibilism (a distinction between mental and physical), taken for granted in both the definition of hard determinism and metaphysical libertarianism. Richardbrucebaxter (talk) 15:11, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Richard: Thanks for your surprise over my memory, which I am sorry to say is not what it once was. Although some changes have been made, as you point out, the paragraph still is gobbledygook. Although precision in discussion can militate against clarity, there are many authors (e.g. Kim, Harris) who manage nonetheless to be readable. Brews ohare (talk) 16:21, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

New introduction
For discussion purposes:

Free will is the ability of agents to make choices. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long been debated in philosophy. Historically, a preoccupation has been nomological determinism, the notion that, in fact, the present dictates the future entirely and necessarily, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events. On this basis one might assert that an agent cannot make choices, there is no "free will", a position called hard determinism. The opposite view, that nomological determinism is not a fact, is that of metaphysical libertarianism. Nomological determinism, however, is not a claim that can be tested, it is undecidable whether this claim is a property of nature. So the incompatibilist debate over whether this proposition is "fact" can be regarded as "academic" in the pejorative sense of that adjective.

Positions that deny that nomological determinism is relevant are classified as compatibilist. One school of compatibilism is devoted to a discussion of nominological determinism, and so is "academic", like the incompatibilist arguments. However, a compatibilist position with testable consequences is that constraints upon free will do exist, examples being addiction and psychological disorders, and one may discuss the nature of such constraints, the mechanisms by which they affect our decisions, and the role of pre-conditioning upon agent response, such as brainwashing, education, and evolutionary programming. This complex of issues addresses the point that "free will" is less free than everyday subjective observation might suggest to us.

The above focus upon constraints avoids the historical debate over whether free will actually exists, and instead takes the view that the nature of its limitations are the issue, and leaves to the future a determination of how severe these limitations may prove to be. It might evolve with further observation that our "free will" is largely illusory, or that it extends only to long-term decisions; future developments will tell the story.


 * Notes

_______________

Comments
Perhaps this proposal can be adapted to meet Pfhorrest's criteria? Brews ohare (talk) 17:40, 26 November 2012 (UTC)


 * I would probably agree with all this as a personal essay on the subject, but as an encyclopedia article there's no way that we can be so dismissive of incompatibilism and still claim to be sticking to NPOV. --Pfhorrest (talk) 21:52, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Pfhorrest: My dismissal of incompatibilism is based on the idea that it is an argument about nothing, because the exaggerated position that the future is determined by prior events cannot be set up to be a testable statement. How would you suggest overcoming the objection that the classical statement "the present dictates the future entirely and necessarily, that every occurrence results inevitably from prior events" is not a statement about anything empirically testable? One might rephrase the statement of hard determinism to become an actually testable statement. If that is done, then the argument is no longer the classical one, but a different one, so that doesn't seem to fix things. Would you bring up questions of ontology, for example, whether experimental testing matters? If that is the route, the article has to face the problem that if the classical debate is in a space orthogonal to testable propositions, it hasn't practical implications, and it all is a bit "academic", eh? Brews ohare (talk) 05:41, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The book cited above, Solomon and Higgins, seeks to distinguish between prediction and cause. That is an approach to placing "cause" outside the realm of the testable, as a cause may lead to an event without our being able to prove it. Are there some better approaches out there that are not ultimately reducible to placing determinism in the realm of things not scientific? Brews ohare (talk) 05:57, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * This all sounds like you're arguing more about the subject than about how the article should summarize notable views on the subject. It sounds like I would mostly agree with you in a discussion about the subject itself, but the topic of discussion here is not which positions on free will are right or wrong or scientific or unscientific or tenable or untenable. It's just about which positions are held by notable authors in the various relevant fields. So no matter how much I might agree about the untenability of incompatibilism when wearing my philosopher's hat, when wearing my encyclopedist's hat I have to acknowledge that there are notable people out there who support incompatibilism, and that dismissing it out of hand in the article's own voice, even for what I may think are good reasons, would be to bias the article against those notable positions -- toward my philosophical point of view, sure, so as a philosopher I wouldn't object, but as an encyclopedist (which is the hat we should all be wearing here on Wikipedia) I have to object on the groups of WP:NPOV.
 * Put another way, our purpose here is not to tell people the truth about free will. It is to report the consensus of experts in the field(s) on that matter. Since there isn't a consensus among said experts on this matter, all we can do is report the various different positions they hold, without bias toward any of them. "Wikipedia's articles are intended as intelligent summaries and reflections of current published debate within the relevant fields, an overview of the relevant literature. The Verifiability policy is related to another core content policy, Neutral point of view, which holds that we include all significant views on a subject." (from that last link). To do as you suggest here would be like writing the article on God from a strong agnostic, ignostic, or apatheist point of view (with theism and atheism analogous to metaphysical libertarianism and hard determinism), rather than a noncommittal neutral point of view which merely reports what different people say about the subject without commenting on who if anyone is right. --Pfhorrest (talk) 10:00, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Pfhorrest: I have no objection to anything you say above. You may observe that my remarks are populated with questions, not assertions, about how to proceed. (None of these got a response.) I'm searching for a way to accommodate your suggestion that incompatibilism be given more room in the introduction and not be relegated to a playground dispute in the history section.
 * One way to approach this might be to view the incompatibilist efforts as a search for a way to make the subjective intuition of free will a more precisely described phenomenon and relate it to things like behavior with more rigor. One might take the optimistic view that this goal is a work in progress, and introduce the discussion of emergence as a modern example of searching for a place for free will in a testable surrounding. One could continue with the notion that examining the constraints upon free will without a clear idea of what free will actually is, is a bit of a chimera. If we say dopamine affects behavior, we are on pretty solid ground, but if we say it affects free will, one might ask: How does that add dimension to the discussion? The basic issue is: How do we connect cogito ergo sum and other introspective experiences with publicly accessible experience like science? Brews ohare (talk) 13:03, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * As you are aware, Popper, Hawking and others approach this issue using mental constructs, theories, which are undeniably subjective in origin and are subjectively employed in conjunction with objective external observations that are connected to each other and also are suggested by these theories. Duhem and Quine take the view that this program doesn't cover the territory and is too limited. Brews ohare (talk) 13:49, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * These remarks, like their predecessor, obviously require fleshing out with sources. At the moment they are just explorations of direction. Brews ohare (talk) 13:03, 27 November 2012 (UTC)


 * It is a digression, but I am attracted to the history of our understanding of pain. Pain is a subjective phenomenon entirely, but over time it has been related with more and more detail to information processing in the body. See Charlie Rose. The pain one feels can be connected to certain receptors and communication channels and to certain brain activities. Isn't there an important analogy here to what "free will" might bring to a study of intention and its implementation? It is an example where one can use personal observation of subjective pain to set up a study of an objective formulation of pain. Brews ohare (talk) 14:08, 27 November 2012 (UTC)