Paul Thyry (Baron D'Holbach / Mirabaud) - French / German Sympathizer With Some Epicurean Ideas

To my (likely limited) knowledge, strict libertarian free will entails that our agency (decisions/actions) are so unconstrained that, in any exact same situation, one could have always chosen differently. This implies that both exogenous circumstance and endogenous circumstances (e.g., my state of mind, education, ability to observe and analyze) are the same, and yet I could have chosen differently in any and every case. Now, if all those circumstances are strictly determinative, then the only way I could have chosen differently is if my choices are random. That is why I reject strict libertarian free will (again, as I understand it). I don’t see Epicurus as a strict free-will libertarian.

That does not mean the only alternative is strict determination. Some constraints (both exogenous and endogenous) may be determinative, others not. In some cases, in some ways, I might have been able to choose otherwise. In some cases, not. Some constraints might be sufficiently determinative as to present mitigating circumstances (ethically); others not so much.

So, I take a kind of middle ground about questions of what could be and what might have been possible.

When we make choices using whatever degree of free will that's available to us, the effects of those choices form "ripples" in the deterministic fabric. These ripples then determine subsequent events up to the point at which free will occurs in those events. And so on, ad infinitum.

What are the philosophical implications of this? Or are there any? I suppose hard determinists would say that there's no free will available to us, so there are no implications. But if we do have any amount of free will, it seems to me that, over infinite time, the amount of free will would increase exponentially.

Other than a sense of agency v nihilism, what are the practical implications of this debate? I tend to get brain freeze thinking about this

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Quote from Don Their contention is that if we knew the position of every atom and the physical laws that pertained to them, it would be possible to accurately know what would happen next ad infinitum.

Would that entail that there is no randomness in the system? That every event is perfectly predictable?

Now I want to hear from Martin!

Here is a slightly expanded version of my lost comment from yesterday:

In classical mechanics, there is no principal lower limit to the error with which we can know positions and speeds of bodies like there is in quantum mechanics. However, the error will never be reduced to 0. The residual error will propagate to large errors with time. That means events in the far future are not predictable. Therefore, even the simplistic "billiard board" model does not support hard determinism. E.g. the trajectory of Earth can be predicted some million years ahead (if there is no collision with a huge rogue celestial body) but not hundreds of millions of years:

How far ahead can we predict solar and lunar eclipses?

The solar system is non-integrable and has chaos. The sun-earth-moon three-body system might be chaotic. So, how far into the future can we predict solar…

physics.stackexchange.com

Hard determinism means that even the distant future is entirely determined by what happens now or has happend in the very distant past. That means all information about the future state of an isolated thermodynamic system is contained in the present state. Increase in entropy means increase of the information needed to completely describe the system. If the complete information has already always been there, entropy does not increase, in contradiction to what we observe for sufficiently large isolated systems.

The concept of free will makes sense for a supernatural soul but does not fit well into a materialistic world.

Instead, agency is a better concept. It works whether the materialistic world is deterministic or not. In a deterministic world, any moment of the distant past completely determines the action which an individual takes, but it is still impossible to accurately predict the action because the complete information of the past is impossible to gather, and the consequences are impossible to calculate. Without hard determinism, indeterminacies at the microscopic level add their influence on the present such that the predetermination by the past is weaker the further that past is in the past. The indeterminacies accumulate to increase variation of the outcome the further ahead the future under consideration is. This increases the variation in the observed output and would reduce but not prevent probabilistic success of predictions.

The indeterminacies at the microscopic level do not constitute a kind of materialistic soul as emergent property. My agency is derived from the past and - if there is no hard determinism - by the outcome of ongoing indeterminacies. These indeterminacies may add to the options to choose from and thereby enhance agency.

Anyone can predict that I will eventually get up to eat something, but no one can predict the second in which I will do that, and prediction of my choice of food is possible with only probabilistic success. The more complex the action to be predicted is, the lower are the chances of prediction.

Further progress in the development of artificial intelligence might eventually show whether complexity of a deterministic artificial neural network is enough to produce some kind of consciousness and meaningful pioneering creativity.

My best guess is that intentionally adding indeterminacies to the network enables or at least facilitates the ability to come up with genuinely new ideas.

Quote from Godfrey

When we make choices using whatever degree of free will that's available to us, the effects of those choices form "ripples" in the deterministic fabric. These ripples then determine subsequent events up to the point at which free will occurs in those events. And so on, ad infinitum. ...

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....Other than a sense of agency v nihilism, what are the practical implications of this debate?

In the 3rd video (by the School of Life) that Don posted above in post 36, it brings up "Defeatism vs. Aspiration". (I did not like that Stoic story about human beings being like "dogs tied to an unpredicatable cart" because it doesn't illuminate anything about how we actually navigate or problem solve).

Thinking further, our competence and skill in life comes about through our belief in our ability to affect things, change things, learn things, and problem solve -- these all require a strong feeling of agency (or "free will").

There is a 12-step AA Serenity Prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

For our own Epicurean purposes this could be rephrased:

May I know and put skillful effort into what I need do. May I make peace with that which is beyond my sphere of influence. And may I have the wisdom to discern the difference between what I can and cannot change.

(This could be said many different ways).