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    Entries in philosophy (6)

    Wednesday
    Sep222021

    The Free Will Thread: Survey Says...

    Free. It wasn't unanimous, but it was still heavily in favor of "free".

    The question, recall, was whether someone who decided to stay in a room did so freely if it turned out that he (or she) was locked inside. In other words, is it enough for an act to be free if one did it of one's own volition, or does it require the ability to do otherwise?

    In fact, things can get much more complicated than this, in a hurry. For instance, suppose that the person stays in the room of his own volition, but this time he was hypnotized to do so. Do we think the person is free in this case? Probably not, but when decision time came around he was doing what he wanted to do, without any coercion at that moment. I suspect that most people would agree that this time, the action wasn't free. But what was missing?

    One obvious answer is that the person couldn't have done otherwise - but then we're back to the original problem. A possible fix: maybe the person wasn't free to act, but was free to will. He could will to leave the room, and maybe that is enough for freedom, even if being able to carry out the intention to leave was not. Another approach is to say that someone's action, or at least act of willing, is free if nothing about the state of the world at the moment of the person's decision determined that act of will. These approaches have been challenged as well (and defended), but are far more resilient than the original definition where we worry about whether the person's action was free.

    Note that the foregoing is not an attempt to show either that we do or do not have free will, in any of the broad senses considered above. That is of course the most interesting question, and there are standard arguments pro and con. First, we must define some terms, however, because free will can be affirmed in a way that is compatible with determinism, or in a way that is not. The first version is, understandably, called compatibilism or compatibilist freedom, and the latter is often referred to as libertarian freedom. (These are gross generalizations, but good enough for a first pass.)

    Thus the compatibilist wants to say that a person could not have done otherwise. They could have done otherwise IF they had wanted to do otherwise, but that "if" isn't satisfied, and the person's action is determined. How? Various options have been offered: by the laws of physics (at least probabilistically), by one's strongest desire, by God's providence or even just God's knowledge, or by the existence of facts about the future. (E.g. if it's true now that I'm going to the store tomorrow, then, the thought goes, I cannot not go to the store tomorrow, given that it's already a fact now and I don't have the power to change the past.) At any rate, it is determined, one way or another, but that doesn't undermine one's freedom, provided one acts of one's own volition and not under some sort of coercion. If I eat an offered slice of cheesecake, it's a free action - I'm doing what I want to do, and no one is twisting my arm, literally or figuratively. It may be that my preferences are such that it was guaranteed at that moment that I would say yes, but so what? I did what I wanted to, and that's good enough, according to the compatibilst.

    Libertarians, by contrast, will often find this a specious sense of "freedom". It is good that I'm acting consistently with my preferences, and not under coercion. That's good - no argument there. But if I couldn't have done otherwise, or willed otherwise, or willed without being determined to will as I did, then how am I any more free than someone who has been hypnotized to do what he does? It seems obvious that people merit praise and blame for at least some of their actions, to at least some extent. But if compatibilist freedom is the correct model, it is hard to see how this could be so. We might not like what Hitler did, but if his actions were ultimately determined by causal chains that began outside of him and that guaranteed their result, how can we blame him? But it seems as obvious as anything we believe that he is blameworthy, and therefore a theory that says that he is innocent must be false.

    So, both sides have plausible-sounding arguments on behalf of their views, and need to address the positive contentions made by their opponents. (And of course, they have done so, endlessly - there is a huge literature on the topic of free will.) We can go deeper with this, but it's late here and it's time for me to call it a night. Thank you for your responses, and I may do this again soon.

    Saturday
    Sep182021

    Free Will Survey (Updated)

    Part of my life, outside of chess, is to give the occasional philosophy lecture, and I'll soon offer one on the topic of free will. Here's your chance to offer me a little help with that: I'd like to see where people's intuitions are in the following case. So even if you don't normally comment, please make an exception in this case so I can get a larger sample size. It's not a scientific poll, obviously, but more comments/votes will still make for more interesting data.

    Here's the scenario. Imagine that you're a college student, studying in your dorm for a coming test. You've been at it for a couple of hours, and are considering taking a break to visit with some friends for a while before studying some more. After deliberating for several minutes, you decide to keep studying, and visit with your friends later.

    Unbeknownst to you, however, the door had been jammed shut, and you couldn't have left even if you had wanted to. So here's the question: did you stay in your room freely, or not? On the one hand, you did what you wanted to, under no coercion whatsoever. On the other hand, you couldn't have done otherwise. So where do you land on this? Was your decision free, or not free?

    **UPDATE**

    Some responses are coming in, for which I thank you. Please keep them coming, and if you don't see them show up it's because I will wait a while, so that readers will offer their gut reactions without being influenced by their fellow readers.

    Monday
    Mar152021

    Towards a Philosophy of Chess

    That is the title of a 1979 essay by Jose Benardete (1928-2016). Highly recommended to those suffering with insomnia or considering entry into the already overcrowded field of academic philosophy. (It's not so bad for those already infected with a knowledge of the sort of analytic philosophy being practiced in the 1960s-1980s, but for those blissfully unaware of it you'll find major sections of the paper tough sledding.)

    Friday
    Dec272019

    Is "Who Made God?" a Problem for Theists?

    For the third day of Christmas, a new topic, again focused on confusions about some aspect of Christianity. (Though not specifically Christianity, in this case.) We live in a strangely bifurcated age, with pockets where rationality is celebrated and other pockets where it is ignored or derided. Unfortunately, religious belief is often found in the second set of pockets, and this arises among believers and unbelievers alike. Case in point: the idea raised by some atheists that the question, “Who made God?”, poses a problem for theism.

    Now, if a Christian or some other theist (e.g. a Jew or a Muslim) argued as follows:

    Everything that exists has a cause.

    The universe exists.

    Therefore, the universe has a cause – God.

    the objection would make sense. Against this sort of argument, it would be appropriate to ask about God’s cause, as the first premise doesn’t just invite it; it demands it.

    The problem is that no religious believer in history has ever made this argument.* What theists have argued is that anything that begins to exist has a cause, or anything that is contingent has a cause, or anything that appears to be designed and can’t be explained by necessity or chance has a (designing) cause, and so on. There is always some qualification: things of a certain sort are such that they are not self-explanatory, and ultimately depend for their existence on something which is not of the same sort and therefore not in need of the same sort of explanation. (A being that is reasonably construed as God.) The arguments may or may not succeed, but if they fail it’s not because the property in need of explanation is also possessed by God.

    But leave this aside. Maybe that’s one reason why some non-theists have asked the question. But why can’t the question be asked anyway? Isn’t it reasonable to ask, who made God? Maybe what we call “God” is really God-1, who is made by God-2, who is made by …God-N. Could it be gods (rather than turtles) all the way down? And if not, isn’t that a reason to just rule out any gods at all?

    This argument may be relevant to certain conceptions of God. If one is talking about Zeus or Odin, for example – finite gods whose existence isn’t in any way self-explanatory – then sure. But this is not the conception of God held by traditional Christians (or traditional Jews or Muslims). God is supposed to be a necessary being, independent in principle of all other beings, self-explanatory and the source of all existence. To ask about the maker of such a being is a bit like asking what’s north of the earth’s north pole. If we understand what it is for something to be the north pole, we understand that it makes no sense to ask what’s north of it. Likewise, to ask what accounts for the existence of the source of all existence is likewise a nonsensical question.

    Note: this is not by itself an argument that God exists, just as the north pole argument doesn’t prove that there is a north pole. Had there been no earth, its north pole obviously wouldn’t have existed, either. Similarly, we’re not saying that there is an uncreated, self-explanatory God that is the source of all existence. Rather, the claim is that if God exists, it makes no sense to ask who or what caused God to exist. Some things can be caused to exist, but if there’s a God, he’s not one of them.

    * Okay, that’s too strong a claim. There was probably a drunk philosopher, a depressed theologian, and a couple of couple of college sophomores on spring break who each came employed it. But the number of times theists have been accused of making this sort of argument, as opposed to the number of times they’ve actually made it, is probably two or three orders of magnitude in favor of the first option.

    Monday
    Nov192018

    The Pop Quiz/Unexpected Hanging Paradox, Chess Edition

    I've always enjoyed puzzling through philosophical paradoxes, and one that I would sometimes mention to students was the so-called pop quiz paradox. The way it works is this: the teacher tells his students that there will be a pop quiz next week, where a pop quiz is defined as one whose specific date cannot be predicted. (The unexpected hanging paradox is the same thing, except that it's a prisoner's being hanged that will be the unpleasant, unpredictable surprise.) It might come on Monday, it might come on Friday, or any day in between. It will happen, it won't be announced beforehand, and it can't be predicted with certainty beforehand.

    But with this definition a problematic result ensues. Suppose, the students reason in advance, that it hasn't happened after next Thursday's class. Then it would have to be on Friday, but since Friday is impossible (it would be predictable with certainty) it wouldn't be a pop quiz. (We're assuming here and throughout that both the teacher and the students are fully rational, and are aware that the other partie(s) are fully rational as well.) Therefore, the students know on Wednesday that since it can't happen on Friday, it would have to happen on Thursday. But if it has to happen on Thursday, then once again it's not a pop quiz. And since this reasoning can be repeated, it can't be on Wednesday, Tuesday, or Monday either. In fact, one could have an infinite number of days, and all can be ruled out one by one. This seems nuts, however - obviously if a teacher tells the students that there will be a pop quiz some time during the semester or the school year, it's clear that the students can be surprised, even if the reasoning purports to show that a pop quiz is impossible. So something is going wrong somewhere.

    Anyhow, I was thinking about Fabiano Caruana's chances to win the match during the classical portion, and wondering when exactly he should "panic" about the possibility of the rapid (and possibly blitz) playoff. (I'm assuming he's a relatively heavy underdog in the rapid and a serious underdog in the blitz, if it comes to that. And by "panic" I mean that he should take some extra - but not suicidal - risks to increase the possibility of a decisive classical game.) Certainly by game 12 it will be time to take some extra risks, but what about before that?

    Now, let's suppose that Magnus Carlsen will know when Caruana is in a panic situation, and that this knowledge can be used to give his chances a serious extra boost. (This may not be true, but let's suppose it is for the sake of the thought experiment.) If that's correct, then it seems that we'll have another version of the pop quiz paradox. Caruana won't want to wait until game 12 to panic, because then Carlsen will know and will have an extra edge. But then after game 10 Carlsen will know that Caruana can't wait until game 12, and must therefore panic in game 11. But then that's bad for Caruana as well...and so on, all the way back to game 1. So how do we resolve this? And speaking outside the bounds of the paradox, when should Caruana panic (in the sense above) if the match is tied?

    Saturday
    Sep232017

    Plantinga Wins Templeton Prize

    Since you're all primed for a non-chess post on a football Saturday, I'll sneak in another one. Those of you who are only here for the chess are of course welcome to ignore this and wait for more chess posts, which will be coming later today. But I'm happy to note that a philosopher who influenced me a great deal (my other career was in academia, teaching philosophy) has won a major award, the 2017 Templeton Prize.

    Alvin Plantinga is a retired Notre Dame philosopher who has been very influential in analytic philosophy since the 1960s, having written important works on possible worlds/modal logic, but most especially epistemology and philosophy of religion. I don't agree with him on every jot and tittle, but he strongly influenced my philosophical thinking when I was a student, and my Notre Dame fanhood is mostly a by-product of Plantinga's having taught at the school.

    The announcement is here (with links to some of his more important papers at the bottom), a big video archive of short interviews covering his work is here (see also here), and the ceremony is at the Field Museum in Chicago tomorrow at 6 p.m. and will be broadcast online.