3 Quarks Daily Philosophy Prize Finalists 2014

December 1, 2014 8:15 PM

3QD's 2014 finalists for best blog posts on philosophical topics: Should animal products have ethical warning labels? Why is scientific uncertainty a moral responsibility [see last 4 mins.]? Should people choose probabilistically among competing moral theories? What are some bad ways of arguing about free will? Are most of us just not good enough to be utilitarians? Are volunteer soldiers morally responsible for unjust wars? Do P2P networks provide a model for something to do with consciousness, reality, and, yep, quantum mechanics? When are delusions good for us (see also)? What's up with philosophical systems that knock themselves down, e.g. Nāgārjuna's, Nietzsche's, and Rorty's? There's also an archive page for older prizes and other categories (previously).
posted by Monsieur Caution (35 comments total)

The free will piece is a diatribe in support of compatibilism, the belief that free will is compatible with a world where every action is determined by the events preceding it, an idea that William James called "a quagmire of evasion" and Immanuel Kant called it "wretched subterfuge" and "petty word-jugglery."

Aka contemporary academic analytic philosophy.
posted by shivohum at 8:39 PM on December 1, 2014 [2 favorites]

From the utilitarian link: trolley experiments where a person is asked to kill someone to save five people do little to help utilitarians because "a tendency to endorse the violent sacrifice of one person in other to save a greater number was not (or even negatively) associated with paradigmatic markers of utilitarian concern for the greater good." Apparently trolley experiments primarily test for psychopathy.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 9:10 PM on December 1, 2014 [2 favorites]

It's a long time since I really studied philosophy, but Nietzsche, Wittgenstein and Rorty were/are my three favourite philosophers! So thank you for that link!
posted by maupuia at 10:53 PM on December 1, 2014

The ethical warning labels one I read as a pretty good critique of liberalism through information failure, but the comments seem to have taken it as straight.

The P2P one is a bunch of bullshit based on poor understanding of the attempted metaphor (the location of files in a p2p network is not "indeterminate").

The compatiblism essay is actually pretty interesting, shivohum's hobby horse notwithstanding.
posted by klangklangston at 11:05 PM on December 1, 2014 [3 favorites]

The compatibilism essay seems to be arguing that because we think we have free will then we do. It may feel like we're making choices but that doesn't me we are.
posted by sineater at 11:43 PM on December 1, 2014 [2 favorites]

I sort of like the ethical warnings one as a form of civil disobedience. Surprised an animal rights group hasn't done this yet.
posted by gucci mane at 12:12 AM on December 2, 2014

Why privilege animals over people? If you want ethical warning labels on animal products, great! Introduce them alongside labels showing the sweatshop conditions inherent in the production of your high street brand clothes, your iPhones, put up signs detailing just how little pay the employees at McDonald's get, put up a representative exposition of living as a minimum wage retail worker in a zero hour contract at the checkout in the supermarket.

You want people to be informed, people should be informed. Why put animals before people? There are even more of us ignoring the latter on some level in our everyday lives.
posted by Dysk at 12:28 AM on December 2, 2014 [5 favorites]

I don't think free will is compatible with a universe where events aren't predetermined, either.

It's like, ok, instead of being a pseudorandom effect of massive chaos, your consciousness is now a truly random (but within limits) effect of quantum uncertainty.

Happy?
posted by LogicalDash at 12:40 AM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

Anyway I don't think the free will piece is a "diatribe". It's written by a person who is in favor of compatibilism and states as much up front but the actual thesis of the piece is just that certain ways of talking about free will seem not to go anywhere. Now, that does put incompatibilists in a bad place, because those ways of talking are popular among incompatibilists, but even so, that's a very specific attack on some things incompatibilists do, where a diatribe would rail against the position per se.
posted by LogicalDash at 1:23 AM on December 2, 2014 [3 favorites]

If you've ever sat through a university course that dealt with the debate over free will, the article on how not to think about it is refreshing. There is so much nonsense in the field because people can't stop chasing around Harry Frankfurt's daft counterexample and trying to come up with outlandish thought experiments to demonstrate this or that concept. And the injection of morality into the question does basically constitute an argument from consequences. But if you got rid of those two things (as well as mystical notions of quantum mechanics), compatibilism would be the only position you could hold outside of direct appeal to religion.

Calling compatibilism "word-jugglery" seems ironic, given that compatibilism's central point is that libertarian free will takes a common sense position (I appear to be free to choose) and turns it into a bizarre metaphysical stance (my freedom of choice is magical and overrides all of history up to that point).
posted by graymouser at 3:40 AM on December 2, 2014 [5 favorites]

"a quagmire of evasion" ... "wretched subterfuge" ... "petty word-jugglery."

Aka contemporary academic analytic philosophy.

I would love it if just once there could be a thread on philosophy that didn't have to include (much less start out with) "zingers" like this. Sometimes it's ok to just leave the low-hanging fruit hanging.
posted by tractorfeed at 4:23 AM on December 2, 2014 [7 favorites]

It's like, ok, instead of being a pseudorandom effect of massive chaos, your consciousness is now a truly random (but within limits) effect of quantum uncertainty.

Happy?

Well that simply leads to the conclusion that free will doesn't exist, with which of course incompatibilism is perfectly compatible. Free will is certainly not just randomness.
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Calling compatibilism "word-jugglery" seems ironic, given that compatibilism's central point is that libertarian free will takes a common sense position (I appear to be free to choose) and turns it into a bizarre metaphysical stance (my freedom of choice is magical and overrides all of history up to that point).

Well "overriding" history seems to assume that history would necessarily go in a particular direction but for free will's intervention, when perhaps free will is a natural part of history, as necessary to its other processes as a row number is to a column number when searching for a particular position in a table.

I don't think people think that free will means, for example, being able to jump 30 feet in the air or act as if they didn't experience some trauma when they did. They do mean that within a limited span of options that physics and various other constraints dictate, that there is still a truly free -- that is, non-random AND non-determined -- choice. History and physics may set the possible bounds of choice at 1 and 2, but there are of course an infinity of numbers between 1 and 2, and the choice between them at least should be intelligent and yet free of constraint.

That is what people mean when they think they have free will. It's the only real question of interest. No one cares whether they have compatibilist free will.

Real free will may not exist; it may even be an incoherent concept -- that's another issue -- but if it does, that's what it must look like.
posted by shivohum at 6:18 AM on December 2, 2014

I would love it if just once there could be a thread on philosophy that didn't have to include (much less start out with) "zingers" like this. Sometimes it's ok to just leave the low-hanging fruit hanging.

Have you ever read any MeFi threads about "postmodernism"? If not, you're gonna have a blast! It's always like a desperate rush to demonstrate who can peddle most inane cliches within a minute.
posted by Pyrogenesis at 7:02 AM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

They do mean that within a limited span of options that physics and various other constraints dictate, that there is still a truly free -- that is, non-random AND non-determined -- choice.

Caused by what? Some mixture of reasons and feelings? But what causes the particular mixture of reasons and feelings that lead to a particular decision? Where in that process can you point to something that is "free" in a sense that it really could have been different given those existing reasons and feelings?

Or if you prefer to define freedom as being the genuine source of one's actions rather than the possibility that a decision could have been different the problem becomes deciding what counts as an internal free motivation vs. an external coercive motivation. The circles we draw and say "inside here is a person, outside is the rest of the world" turn out to be arbitrary and porous borders.
posted by straight at 8:26 AM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

Caused by what?

Caused by nothing. Or call it self-caused. Able to take into account "reasons and feelings" without being caused by them to do anything. Yet not random. Again, I'm not necessarily saying that this kind of free will exists. But I am saying this is the only free will worth debating.
posted by shivohum at 8:48 AM on December 2, 2014

"Caused by nothing" seems essentially like a mystical position to take. As in a fundamental prob of our decision making process is not a product of neural activity, which is in turn based on neuron creation and pruning based on experience..

Honestly, free will is a question on the level of debating about the nature of heaven. A relic of pre-scientific thinking.
posted by happyroach at 9:07 AM on December 2, 2014

Actually, Vihvelin's new book looks like an interesting response to all the objections I just mentioned, so I table them until I have a chance to read it.
posted by straight at 9:40 AM on December 2, 2014

I'm not sure, though about Vihvelin's admonition to Stick to the Subject. This isn't really what he's talking about, but I think it might be an important consideration.

Depression is a prevalent disease. One of the most effective treatments for depression, CBT, involves convincing patients that they have agency. I used to roll my eyes at the idea (expressed, for instance in Ted Chiang's short-short story published in Nature) that a convincing refutation of free will would result in widespread apathy. But I wonder if it might not, in fact, be a dangerous idea for people with depression. Maybe philosophers ought to take certain precautions when discussing free will, like a biologist with a biohazard.
posted by straight at 9:56 AM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

That is what people mean when they think they have free will. It's the only real question of interest. No one cares whether they have compatibilist free will.

I don't agree. I think it has more to do with identifying yourself as the one who's making the choice, irrespective of what a choice is. Precisely what you are and what it means to be who you are is a different can of worms, of course, but in any case it looks to me like you're insisting that your definition of free will is the only reasonable one.
posted by LogicalDash at 9:56 AM on December 2, 2014 [2 favorites]

I think it has more to do with identifying yourself as the one who's making the choice, irrespective of what a choice is.

Why would anyone care whether "they" were making the choice if there were no freedom in the choice? Why would that be of the tiniest interest?

The question that plagues people is whether they actually have libertarian freedom, to which there are two fair and debatable responses: yes or no. Instead, compatibilists switch up the meanings of the words and answer an entirely different and mostly worthless question and claimed to have solved the problem. It's almost exactly parallel to the way that materialist philosophers explain away consciousness, by redefining it in trivial terms.
posted by shivohum at 10:46 AM on December 2, 2014

Why would anyone care whether "they" were making the choice if there were no freedom in the choice?

1. That you don't understand why they care doesn't mean that they don't. I care, because to me, a decision made on the basis of my own motives plus a lot of impersonal forces is different (in senses moral and otherwise) than one made on the basis of others' motives and a bit of my own.
2. There are many types of freedom. You don't need to believe in free will the way you've defined it in order to believe in freedom in the sense that a hostage has almost none of, a wage slave has little of, a mentally unwell but steadily employed person has more of and a white male millionaire has possibly too much of.

You seem to have thought through your opinion on this matter thoroughly but narrowly.
posted by LogicalDash at 1:34 PM on December 2, 2014

The question that plagues people is whether they actually have libertarian freedom, to which there are two fair and debatable responses: yes or no.

I don't think you will have a productive debate on this topic when you say things like this. You're defining the terms of the debate in the way that's most favorable to what you already believe. You seem smart enough to understand the problem with that so I think you have some kind of personal investment here that would be altogether off topic for the thread.
posted by LogicalDash at 1:38 PM on December 2, 2014

I care, because to me, a decision made on the basis of my own motives plus a lot of impersonal forces is different (in senses moral and otherwise) than one made on the basis of others' motives and a bit of my own.

Why? "Your own" motives are equally composed by just-as-impersonal forces. What does it matter to the robot whether the programming is, due to the environment, limited to two choices, or, given a more favorable environment, has two hundred? The robot is still completely programmed. Even if there are true random number simulators put in.

You're defining the terms of the debate in the way that's most favorable to what you already believe.

I'm defining the terms of the debate by what people actually mean and have always wondered about when they use "free will." I think compatibilists should be free to have the other discussion they want, but they shouldn't muddle the issue by pretending to have solved free will. That's what irks me.
posted by shivohum at 1:53 PM on December 2, 2014

"Why would anyone care whether "they" were making the choice if there were no freedom in the choice? Why would that be of the tiniest interest?"

Because it could not be otherwise!
posted by klangklangston at 2:02 PM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

"I'm defining the terms of the debate by what people actually mean and have always wondered about when they use "free will." "

… so, begging the question.

People have meant a lot of things by "free will." Even now, the distinction between conceptions of free will that are based on paths not taken versus conceptions based on authorship of ones' own actions is still important to a lot of arguments around the topic.

I also think that this conversation would be more productive if you actually stated what you believe, rather than dancing around it through snide critiques of other philosophical positions.
posted by klangklangston at 2:05 PM on December 2, 2014 [2 favorites]

so, begging the question

No. Whether people generally have meant libertarian free will by the term free will is not necessarily determinative of the question of what free will is in any particular milieu of philosophical debate -- for example, someone could claim that people have generally meant by X this idea, but it would be superior to think of X as that idea instead -- but I am asserting that it should be. That doesn't beg the question of what free will is, since I'm referring it to a higher principle that "philosophical arguments about particular terms should be terminologically bound to what people actually mean and have always wondered" with respect to those terms. And then I'm making an assertion as to that question, a conceptually distinct point.

By people I think it's abundantly clear I don't mean modern-day academic philosophers. I think many of those philosophers think most people have what to the philosophers is an idiotic idea of free will, and so they've decided to redefine the term to make the debate about what they'd think cogent.

I also think that this conversation would be more productive if you actually stated what you believe, rather than dancing around it through snide critiques of other philosophical positions.

It doesn't take a genius to see I'm an incompatibilist.
posted by shivohum at 2:37 PM on December 2, 2014

I'm defining the terms of the debate by what people actually mean and have always wondered about

Since you seem to have a pretty strong opinion on what common people are thinking when they say "free will" I'd like to see how you came by that opinion. By this point it should be clear that your opinion isn't obvious fact.
posted by LogicalDash at 3:07 PM on December 2, 2014

Since you seem to have a pretty strong opinion on what common people are thinking when they say "free will" I'd like to see how you came by that opinion.

Well, to start with, there are the religious roots of the term in the Judeo-Christian and even in other religious traditions. Free will to Christians means the choice to sin or not to sin, and it appears to be independent of circumstances, independent even of prior character -- as bad people are the archetypal exercisers of the will to turn their back on the past and repent. And while God's grace and other forces can intervene and help someone change, there is still always a choice that exceeds the knowledge presented: "none so blind as those that will not see."

The existence or non-existence of libertarian free will has a direct bearing on moral responsibility, on motivation, and on existential angst, all perennial topics of long-standing human interest. The existence of compatibilist free will does not bear on these in anything like the same way.

If you want a paper, this little paper -- and I'm certain it has defects, I'm not generally a huge fan of experimental philosophy -- is interesting. It studied cross-cultural beliefs about free will.

"In all four cultures, the majority of participants responded that our own universe was indeterministic but that moral responsibility was not possible in a deterministic universe."

That supports the claim that questions of free will, situated against that background, and in the context of ever-greater scientific knowledge, are whether determinism is true (and calling our actions "random" is essentially equivalent to determinism). That's what people really want to know.
posted by shivohum at 3:28 PM on December 2, 2014

shivohum, I also lean toward incompatibilism, and I think it's perfectly legit to say to compatabilists, "what you're describing isn't what I and many others mean by free will."

However, to your question "Does libertarian free will exist, yes or no?" I think it's fair for compatabilists to say, "The concept as many people seem to conceive of it is incoherent and inconsistent. Here is the closest coherent concept to what people seem to be asking about and we argue that free will in this sense does exist." In other words, "sort of" might be a more correct answer than yes or no.
posted by straight at 3:32 PM on December 2, 2014

That supports the claim that questions of free will, situated against that background, and in the context of ever-greater scientific knowledge, are whether determinism is true (and calling our actions "random" is essentially equivalent to determinism). That's what people really want to know.

The sentence you quoted just says a lot of people agree with you. Most people believe in God too. I think that tells us more about human psychology than it tells us about theism, or whatever this God character might be like.

I actually wouldn't identify myself as a compatibilist, by the way. I take a utilitarian stance on the issue -- people's gut feelings about what free will ought to be like don't actually give us much to reason about, so it doesn't make sense to argue about free will or any of its ethical ramifications based on popular prejudice. There's just nothing there to reason about; you might as well try to define art ontologically. But neither would I say "free will doesn't exist" because I also recognize that, when people say the words "free will," they often do so as a way to gesture at something that does exist, and might be interesting to talk about. I am interested in talking about those things, and am willing to use our imperfect language to do so, and that may mean hacking together an operational definition of "free will" that's rather narrow but helps construct a decent ethical system. I think that's a fine use of philosophy.
posted by LogicalDash at 3:56 PM on December 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

 "Free will to Christians means the choice to sin or not to sin, and it appears to be independent of circumstances, independent even of prior character "

This is not true, for reason that Christians are a diverse bunch. Calvinists are full on determinists.

The doctrine of total depravity is the most fun-sounding concept in theology.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 4:02 PM on December 2, 2014

The doctrine of total depravity is the most fun-sounding concept in theology.

And, sadly, one held to most strongly by some of the least fun people in all of human history, notably the likes of Fred Phelps. Hardcore Calvinists are the fucking worst.
posted by Copronymus at 5:05 PM on December 2, 2014

The "problem" of "free will" seems to combine all the things I understand least in philosophy. I don't really know what causation means on levels other than quarks (what does it mean to say one pool ball -- as opposed to its quarks -- causes another to move?); I don't know how even a purely deterministic consciousness can deterministically affect arm raising; I don't know where I or my consciousness comes from that generates or experiences the sensation of free will; I don't really know what "will" means at all; I don't understand how morality depends on freedom; and I don't really even know how one judges morality in conjunction with the sorts of historical contextual effects we all agree affect everyone. A real dog's breakfast of philosophical conundra.
posted by chortly at 6:20 PM on December 2, 2014

"No. Whether people generally have meant libertarian free will by the term free will is not necessarily determinative of the question of what free will is in any particular milieu of philosophical debate -- for example, someone could claim that people have generally meant by X this idea, but it would be superior to think of X as that idea instead -- but I am asserting that it should be."

Yes. You're begging the question by defining the terms according to the conclusion you have reached about the definition of the term "free will," and supporting that with the argument that this is what people have always actually meant when they wonder about free will. Given that to disprove an "always" statement, I just have to show one counter-example, the ongoing debate about control versus alternatives is sufficient to disprove your assertion.

"It doesn't take a genius to see I'm an incompatibilist."

You're also a dualist, specifically a mystical dualist, which heavily influences the types of arguments you make and the evidence you will accept.

"Well, to start with, there are the religious roots of the term in the Judeo-Christian and even in other religious traditions. Free will to Christians means the choice to sin or not to sin, and it appears to be independent of circumstances, independent even of prior character -- as bad people are the archetypal exercisers of the will to turn their back on the past and repent. And while God's grace and other forces can intervene and help someone change, there is still always a choice that exceeds the knowledge presented: "none so blind as those that will not see.""

This is a misleading account of theological determinism, which one can trace back to any number of philosophical antecedents, and ignores that within theological determinism as a consequence of omniscience, the choice isn't merely between sinning and not sinning but rather whether God's omniscience requires determinism. Again, this is not something where everyone always meant one thing.

"The existence or non-existence of libertarian free will has a direct bearing on moral responsibility, on motivation, and on existential angst, all perennial topics of long-standing human interest. The existence of compatibilist free will does not bear on these in anything like the same way."

Aquinas was a compatiblist. He certainly believed that the compatibilist view had direct bearing on moral responsibility. Chryssipus was specifically concerned with moral responsibility.

"If you want a paper, this little paper -- and I'm certain it has defects, I'm not generally a huge fan of experimental philosophy -- is interesting. It studied cross-cultural beliefs about free will. "

That paper builds directly on the work of Nichols and Knobe (indeed, they're listed as co-authors), which is critiqued in the very essay that you snidely dismissed to start this thread. Maybe you could learn something by engaging with the arguments instead of dismissing them.
posted by klangklangston at 7:18 PM on December 2, 2014

Here is the closest coherent concept to what people seem to be asking about and we argue that free will in this sense does exist.

See, I think this is a problem if you're going to use the same term. Because why should all concepts be coherent -- or at least, immediately coherent? In fact, all concepts are provisional. I just think it's confusing and unfair to radically change the meaning like that of a more mysterious term to a far less mysterious one. I think they should say "People don't have free will, but conscious reason and knowledge operate in them mechanically to advance them towards certain goals and in some cases to change previous habits."

That would make sense. That would be clear.
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This is not true, for reason that Christians are a diverse bunch. Calvinists are full on determinists.

Well as far as I can tell, Calvinists would agree with my definition of free will; they'd simply say we don't have it. They're determinists but incompatibilists. No?
--
A real dog's breakfast of philosophical conundra.

Yep!
posted by shivohum at 8:01 PM on December 2, 2014