Sorry I misinterpreted your sentence above to mean you were applying “incoherent” to supernatural. My bad. Still, the concept of free will is not incoherent either. It is a very simple concept that easily expressed, not internally inconsistent, and not self-contradictory, even if it does not exist.
That’s certainly an interesting assertion. But I would not agree. It’s easily expressed, but it’s not easily expressed coherently. You are welcome to try.
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Free will is the power of human choice to affect the time evolution of the universe.
Sorry, not a good definition. Most importantly, it uses the word “choice”, which is the nub of the thing and is undefined. Secondly, it isn’t clearly what “the time evolution of the universe” means. Free will may equal choice, but what is choice?
Yes, I’m a native American (not to be confused with a Native American). If you go far enough into the past, we’re all descended from “invaders”, with the possible exception of a few folks in Africa, though I doubt even those; the history of population movements is too complicated.
Most folks would consider it problematic that you’re denying the free will of “indigenous” people.
You realize that the snake isn’t Satan, and that the satan of Job isn’t Satan either, right? But do you mean that God told the snake to tempt Eve? There’s certainly no clue about that in the story. You’re making stuff up again.
Why is that a problem?
Requires what? And if there’s free will, is there sin too?
Actually it is a good definition, and if you don’t know what the time evolution of the universe means, I can’t help you.
Forget it. I knew, from previous encounters, you would do a Gish Gallup and a goalpost move. I should have known better than to play along.
I guess because you don’t know what “time evolution of the universe” means you naturally reduced my definition to terms you can grasp. But you are leaving out the crucial part. “Choice” is a word that has meaning even in deterministic views, where it is still recognized that there is a process of debate going on in one’s head, even if it is illusory. In that case, it is still referred to as choosing. The difference, what makes it free will, is when that process of choosing actually affects (as opposed to apparently affects) the time evolution of the universe–but, as you say, you don’t know what that means.
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You seem to be rude on purpose, uninterested in explaining what you mean, and more interested in telling me I’m ignorant. And all this after telling me you didn’t want to talk to me any more.
Still don’t know what “time evolution of the universe” means. No hits on Google either.
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@John_Harshman, I don’t think that’s it. @david.heddle is speaking a different language than you. It seems you are both prickly too. 
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What language would that be? Do you understand the importance of “time evolution of the universe”?
I don’t think you’ve actually read our exchange. He’s accused me of both the Gish Gallop and of moving the goalposts.
I did see enough to see you were talking past each other. You don’t think that’s the case?
And yes, I don’t think he should have said you were Gish Galloping.
Who knows? He won’t tell me what he means.
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I think so as well.
The “time evolution of the universe” is as follows: call the state of the universe at time t as X(t). There is an operator, O, that acts on this state to generate time evolution, in the sense
O_T \colon S(t) \mapsto S(t+T),\quad X(t) \mapsto O_T[X(t)] \; ,
where S(t) is the space of all possible states of the universe at time t and T a number (the lapse of time). Note X(t) is a member of S(t) while O_T[X(t)] is a member of S(t+T). This is the general idea in physics, though usually we refer to “systems” in general instead of the entire universe (which is just an example of a system) in particular.
Examples:
- In classical physics, X(t) would be the position and momenta of all particles at time t or any other equivalent descriptions of the classical phase space. O_T would be the map that generates the classical equations of motion.
- In quantum physics, X(t) would be a wave function, say the universal wave function. O_T would be the map that generates the Heisenberg equation of motion.
Caveats from relativity:
- The slices of simultaneity, i.e., what one calls “the same time”, is different for different observers. A valid slice is called a Cauchy surface.
- A Cauchy surface might not exist in our universe.
Given this, there is a question:
Is there only one such time-evolution operator, O_T? Particularly, could it be that there is a “natural” time-evolution operator N_T, and a different time-evolution operator that is caused by humans? In other words, can humans evolve the state of the universe to a state that is not given by N_T?
Here’s my formulation of @david.heddle’s idea:
One candidate for such a human-driven time evolution are the actions humans perform when presented by two or more options. Whether the human picks the first or second or third etc option is what I believe @david.heddle call a “choice”. There are many other definitions of “choice” in philosophy, some of which, as you mentioned, presupposes the existence of free will.
Crucially, it doesn’t even matter if you agree with this definition of the word “choice” or not; the point is that this might be an action that humans can undertake to time-evolve the universe in a way that is different from N_T. You don’t even have to call it “choice” if you don’t want to.
Given @david.heddle’s definition of “choice”, which is perfectly meaningful in a deterministic world, we can formulate its effects on the state of the world (along with the effects of all other unrelated natural time evolution) as the evolution operator C_T, where T is the time it takes for this choice to generate its effects on the state of the universe. Note that the time evolution C_T also includes the naturalistic part of the time-evolution in addition to the “human-driven” one.
We can then ask the question: is this “choice” illusory, in the sense that
C_T[X(t)] = N_T[X(t)] \; ?
In this sense, the act of “choosing” that the human did does not actually affect the time-evolution of the universe. An interpretation of this is that the “choice” itself is pre-determined by the state of the world at the time the choice was made.
However, it could be that
C_T[X(t)] \neq N_T[X(t)] \; ,
in which case, human “choice” affect the time evolution of the universe. Again, it does not matter if you agree with the usage of the word “choice” here; the point is that in this case humans have the capacity to affect the time evolution of the universe. Indeed, we can easily generalize this idea in the sense that this human-driven time evolution might not even be what @david.heddle call “choice” at all; the crux of the argument is that there might be actions that humans can perform that affect the time evolution of the state of the universe.
Calling C_T[X(t)] \neq N_T[X(t)], or even a generalized version, where there is a different “human-driven” evolution operator, “free will” is perfectly rigorous.
Caveats:
- See “Caveats from relativity”
- This is just one formulation of free will
- I don’t believe it at all; I believe that C_T[X(t)] \neq N_T[X(t)] is false
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Certainly the equation looks find. But what could C be? It’s when you start looking into the nature of C that free will becomes incoherent. If it isn’t N, and it isn’t quantum indeterminacy, what is it? If the source of choice is neither rationality nor caprice, what would be the third source?
Very nice. Yes there is a full physics formalism of time evolution in the operator sense, e.g., the Hamiltonian in QM, but I was actually just thinking of the common use of “time evolution” in which a) anyone who has ever had introductory differential equations would have likely encountered and or b) in the unlikely event that a STEM educated person did not ever encounter “time evolution” they could have easily deduced the meaning from the context and plain meaning of the words, Note that in previous posts on this thread I alluded to “the universe’s differential equation” and the process t -> t + dt, so I was only considering a working definition:
- The universe is in state A at time t0.
- Time evolution: the universe will be in a different state at time t1
If I was actually talking past someone I’m surprised. I don’t think this working definition is narrowly applied jargon, but maybe I’m wrong. Likewise, I simply meant by free will the additions:
- If I “choose” at t0 to do b, the universe will be in state B at time t1
- If I “choose” at t0 to do c, the universe will be in a different state C at time t1
Free will: exists if both 3 and 4 are actually and truly available to me at time t0.
That implies a computer-controlled car has free will. When it decides, chooses, to go left around some obstacle instead of right, and this choice affects the time evolution of the universe.
Does this not entail that the state of the universe must include everybody’s thoughts, and that motivations, subjective experience, and rationality’s are fully reducible to physics?
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Isn’t it a problem that there ever is only one real outcome, and the others are never more than mere possibilities that will never get realised? How then do we know that we really could have chosen to do ‘c’ instead of ‘b’, if the actual outcome is always going to be ‘b’?
I don’t think that these mathematical representations do much more than obfuscate the fact that we can’t know if our apparent choices are more than just apparent, for the reason that we never get to compare any realised alternatives. Unless we get to live in a reality where all possible alternative choices also become actualities that we can observe, we will never know if there really was more than one choice.
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No it doesn’t. They equations do not preclude purely deterministic physical entities that give the outward appearance of choice that is not actually free.
Rather it shows that there could be an entity of free choice that does not violate physics, even in a formal or mathematical sense. There is no contradiction implied by free will in a physical world.
Moreover, determinism is a term with multiple meanings. So be cautious wit. It.
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That’s a different issue. Whether we have free will or not is a distinct question from whether it’s a concept that contradicts physics.
Yes, along with the detailed configuration of every atom, electron and quark.
Nope.