Is the Intentional Stance Neutral w.r.t Free Will?

[GodMechanism]

by Intentional, I mean what explains physical laws and exceptions to physical laws, particularally for -Ion behavior inside the dendrites of nerve cells, which connect to other nerve cells. so Like charged Ions inside these dendrites do not alwasy move a p a r t, but can also move Tgthr, at bifurication points(where one dendritic branch splits into two)

[GodMechanism]

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by Intentional. Human Behavior seems directed Towards Results. We Idealize a Result or Sacrifice a Result For Most Total Results, based on relative Signifigance of each result, based on what we are able to take into account at that time. This is Intentional, in my opinion, and it is deterministic, and by intentional I do not mean causal events in the world; this is incidental

[shuyande24]

Hi Randy,

Was going to post this on your 3 part series a week ago but had some computer issues and the response works here:

[shuyande24]

I'm just not convinced that adopting the normative stance necessarily implies treating someone like as though they are a free agent. It seems that someone could as well be just expressing a desire that they'd like to see realized without knowing whether it is realizable. As in,I consider this fair pie state to be of value. The ethical framework doesn't have to be one that assumes free will(could be consequentalist).Like this one could still be treating the actor as if he had will,not free will.

[randyhelzerman]

Hi shuyande24, what do you think the difference between will and free will is?

[shuyande24]

Treating him as if he has will would mean he has desires and beliefs. It is treating him as a being that can decide to act. Whether that decision is free is not salient. Having free will means that given the exact same situation (the same set of beliefs and desires), the actor could choose to act in multiple ways.

[x71isnwor]

isn't it just simpler to say we have free will b/c jesus gave it to us? LOL

[randyhelzerman]

LOL x71...and yeah, I really need to take your advice w.r.t. this whole thing...

[x71isnwor]

start talkign about dinosaurs. they are cool or time travel. i have some ideas about time travel. but the only problem is no matter what my mind thinks abotu there are infinite paradoxes i can nto cope with at this moment. it coudl get as long or longer drawn out than this free willl thing. and if we coudl travel through time what woudl that do to free will. and if we can't then hwo do we have free will. its the true never ending story.. long post

[bitbutter]

What i got from the vid was that we can't say for sure whether person X is a deterministic system or not. But either way, the blue bubbles would be the same because the intentional stance is determination agnostic (determination? that's probably the wrong word, whats the umbrella term for the deterministic and non-deterministic?).

I don't see how you get to the idea that neutrality on this question is the same as assuming non-determinism.

[randyhelzerman]

Hi bitbutter, if we can determinstically predict something, we do not take the intentional stance towards it.  We only take the intentional stance towards things for which we cannot identify deterministic causes for their behavior, i.e. when we attribute free will to them.

[bitbutter]

"We only take the intentional stance towards things for which we cannot identify deterministic causes for their behavior"

That's something quite different from assuming that these things are actually non deterministic, which is something I don't accept that we do.

[randyhelzerman]

Hi bitbutter, remember, I'm trying to break this process down into stages, blue bubbles and pink bubbles. I agree, not being able to identify a deterministic cause is not the same thing as there is no nondeterministic cause, sure. But, the blue bubbles, the intentional stance, does not rely on deterministic predictability in order to work. We all have these same blue bubbles. We can fill in the pink bubbles differently, sure (given our current state of ignorance). (cont)

[randyhelzerman]

(cont, to bitbutter) but this does not eliminate the fact that the blue bubbles do not rely on any determinism in order to do their job, even if we say that they are merely heuristic devices.

[bitbutter]

Sure, but nor do they rely on non-determinism. The blue bubbles, the intentional stance, the mode with in which we interact, isn't evidence for or against a deterministic universe.

[burnvictim77]

Lacking a deterministic explanation does not provide evidence for free will. I don't see how you are getting from A to Z.

I have a will and I want things, and so do other humans. I don't need to even raise the question of whether or not the will is free in order to understand that.

[randyhelzerman]

Say we both take the intentional stance towards X. If I understood your vid correctly, you said that this doesn't force us to treat X as being deterministic, nor does it force us to treat X has being nondeterministic. It leaves X, as it were, unforced to be any particular way. What I'm saying is yes, you aren't constraining X to do any particular thing or behave in any particular way--which is just another way of saying that X has free will.

[burnvictim77]

No, because 'free will' is an explanation of X, just as 'determinism' would be. They are both theories of originiation. Will, on the other hand, is not a theory of origin. It is simply the thing itself.

To say the will is free would require not only a failure to state its constraints, but a method of showing that it is free from constraints.

I am coming through yet?

[randyhelzerman]

Hi burnvictim, if we can identify a deterministic explanation for the behavior of X, we do not say that X has a will. We only interpret something as having a will if we cannot deterministically predict what it will do next. You can verify this by watching the video "social illusion" in my favorites. Pay close attention to which shapes you can determinstically predict their behavior, which you cant, and which the subject takes the intentional stance towards, and which she doesn't.

[burnvictim77]

"Hi burnvictim, if we can identify a deterministic explanation for the behavior of X, we do not say that X has a will."

Appeal to word usage? I'm not sure how this is an argument. And, I'll go so far as to say this is patently false. Further - any reliable PREDICTION isn't necessarily possible for us in complex instances, even if they are entirely deterministic. So, when we deal with people, we do not know how they will respond. This does NOT mean the same thing as FEE WILL.

[randyhelzerman]

Gary, what's wrong with word usage??? One way (some would say the only way) to give the meaning of a word is to see how people _use_ the word. Say you overhear two people arguing in another room. You attribute two wills. Then you walk into the room and see its just a tape recorder playing. The wills vanish. We just don't use the word "will" to describe an entity if we find out its behavior is deterministically caused.

[burnvictim77]

"Gary, what's wrong with word usage???"

Eg. People use the word God to mean X. Therefore, it means X.

This is easily belied because other people use the word God to mean Y.

Same with will. There is no way to get at its nature through conventional usage. Especially since in the context we are discussing it, it is essentially a Western, post-Judeo-Christian concept.

[burnvictim77]

"Say you overhear two people arguing in another room. You attribute two wills..."

The fact that I am able to recognize that a tape recorder does not have a will does not change the fact that humans (the ones on the tape) DO have wills. Back to "what is the will." Desires - tape recorders don't have them; humans do, regardless of metaphysical grounding.

[bitbutter]

"you said that this doesn't force us to treat X as being deterministic, nor does it force us to treat X has being nondeterministic. It leaves X, as it were, unforced to be any particular way."

If i read that right you just conflated our agnosticism about whether X is determined, with freedom of the will of X. That doesn't make sense.

[randyhelzerman]

Hi bitbutter, for something to have free will, its behavior must be constrained normatively, not deterministically. Ergo, anything we can identify a determinsitic cause for, we do not attribute free will to. ou can verify this by watching the video "social illusion" in my favorites. Pay close attention to which shapes you can determinstically predict their behavior, which you cant, and which the subject takes the intentional stance towards, and which she doesn't.

[bitbutter]

"Ergo, anything we can identify a determinsitic cause for, we do not attribute free will to."

I agree with that, compatibilists would disagree. But saying 'we don't know if X has a deterministic cause' is not the same as saying 'X was not constrained by anything, and caused by free will'.

[randyhelzerman]

hi bitbutter, I agree with this: "saying 'we don't know if X has a determinstic cause' is not the same thing as saying 'X was not constraint by anything'" .  And I'm not saying that anything we _can't_ identify a deterministic cause for we consider as having free will. For example, quantum phenomena, or brownian motion. What I am saying is that if we can identify a determinsitic cause for an action (e.g. parkinson's tremor) we do not attribute that action to the exercise of will. (cont)

[randyhelzerman]

(cont, to bitbutter) Since anything we can identify a deterministic cause for we do not call will, then all will is free will (under my ludicrous definition thereof).

[bitbutter]

"anything we can identify a deterministic cause for we do not call will"

I don't believe that this will always hold. Even if the cause of human will turned out to be completely deterministic, it will still be will for all that, just not 'free will'.

It still sounds like you're implying that if we can't find a deterministic cause for will, then no such cause exists, and therefore it's free will. But I reckon i must be misunderstanding something along the line..

[burnvictim77]

"Since anything we can identify a deterministic cause for we do not call will, then all will is free will."

No true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge, either. :)

[randyhelzerman]

LOL.  In Scotland they feed the sugar to the horses ;-)

[bitbutter]

"I have a will and I want things, and so do other humans. I don't need to even raise the question of whether or not the will is free in order to understand that."

agreed

[thinkmorepink]

You are just tearing up the youtubes! Awesome Randy, you say it much better than I could ever say.

[Duck1987]

I don't think there is free will, I am a behaviorist

[EverettsVLOG]

LOL

[Duck1987]

what?

[EverettsVLOG]

i thought he was saying that the intentional stance has nothing to do with the truth of the matter.

[randyhelzerman]

Yes, that is what he was saying. I was saying that the very fact that the intentional stance has nothing to do with the truth of the matter means that it doesn't constrain the agent's actions to be deterministic, ergo it is ascribing free will to them.

[EverettsVLOG]

right but it doesnt matter what we do from the intentional stance, if we are considering what the properties of 'reality' are. even though apparently we both dont believe in reality.

[randyhelzerman]

Hi Everett, w.r.t. reality :-) w.r.t. the intentional stance being real or not; sometimes it isn't real (e.g. we anthropomorphize our pet dawg, or a cartoon character). But when we are interacting with other people, it is the best, most useful theory we have, why not go with it? Agreed, scientists could eventually describe indetail how we are just deterministic, entropy-maximizing machines, but such an account has sucpiciously been not forthcomming....