u/simon_hibbs

It seems to me we use the term cause in two very different ways that are completely independent of each other, and that confusing these for each other results in a lot of problems.

Temporal causation
One way we use the term cause is in discussions about events causing other events. I push the button and this causes the engine to start. This is past event to future event causation. When we talk about causal determinism, this is what we are discussing. Here's a hopefully somewhat uncontroversial definition of determinism for the purpose of discussion.

Causal Determinism: The idea that the past state of the world at some time necessitates specific future states of the world at all later times, as transformed according to natural law.

I say causal determinism, to differentiate it from logical determinism or any other senses. Actually the broader point I'm making here isn't really to do with determinism versus indeterminism, but I'm using this to establish one sense in which we use the term cause. We use it the same way when we talk about indeterminism in relationships between temporal events though.

Hierarchical causation
Another way we talk about causation is in terms of bottom up or top down causation, basically something like reductionism and weak emergence, versus top down or strong emergence. The conclusion I've come to is that this is a completely different concept. I'm not even entirely sure it has any common features with the idea of causal determinism at all.

I came to this conclusion observing some people talking about the relationship between causal determinism and beliefs about the neurological basis of mental processes, such as making decisions. I realised that what seems to happen is people seem to rotate the concept of past-to-future causation into the hierarchical dimension, as though microphysical processes such as chemical reactions in the brain cause thoughts in the way that ball A hitting ball B causes ball B to hit ball C. I don't believe that's the way to think about emergence at all.

Emergence isn't a temporal process, it's a hierarchical or structural one. It's looking at the exact same activity happening at the same time at different degrees of detail. The temperature of a gas is the motion of the gas molecules, it's not something that is caused by their motion in the sense that a gas molecule hitting another causes the other one to be deflected. Likewise the temperature of the gas isn't something that causes the molecules to move a certain way. Viewed this way, causation in the event-to-event sense is a completely different concept. In fact confusing these is pernicious. Even talking about the relationship between the microphysical and macro descriptions in causal terms leads to fundamental misconceptions. I don't think we should be talking about what I'm calling hierarchical causation at all. We need other terms.

I won't go further into what I think those misconceptions are, or what I think about emergence now. Maybe another time. For now I'd be interested to see how others think about this. I'm coming to believe that the fact we use cause in both these senses is a significant problem.

I thought the spudcell research reported this week concerning the creation of an artificial cell that can perform basic assisted metabolism and cell division was pretty interesting. I wasn't expecting this so soon. It's not directly related to consciousness of course, nobody is claiming these things are conscious (I don't think) or even properly alive. To be clear these things are a long way from being living things in an unambiguous sense.

However, suppose we could eventually create any cell we like from base chemicals. Suppose we constructed a single zygote cell indistinguishable from normal human ones. Suppose we grew it to gestation and adulthood. Would the resulting being be conscious?

Having not run or played the game since the 90s, I'm gearing up to run a short campaign at my local games club later this year, in South East London. As part of that I've worked up a character sheet, as I find the one in the book butt ugly and barely functional. It includes two item/creature worksheets on the back page.

Any input welcome, especially from anyone with more/recent experience of playing or running the game. What do you think would make for a better character sheet?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Gd0uwCZY-eaYxp-xIMLTl8cnFQKC2GOO/view?usp=sharing

Updated with space for character art.

BTW for the mods, would it be helpful to have a tag for game related posts?

So, you're a free will skeptic, or a free will optimist and you rock up to the sub and the first thing you do is offer your 'definition' of free will, and argue why it does or does not exist.

First question. What is it about this 'definition' that makes it one of free will? You could be defining some metaphysical concept, or some neurological function, or some decision making mechanism, or some spiritual capacity. Why do you think this is free will?

In principle two people could come to the sub, offer distinct different 'definitions' of free will in terms of human mental faculties, and it might turn out that actually humans do have both of these faculties so defined. Yet they are different. How do we know which is actually free will? It can't be both [but see comment by ughaibu].

So, there must be some criteria that establishes whether this explanation you're offering counts as being free will, as against being something else that is not free will.

The problem with the above picture is that these are not 'definitions' of free will, they are theories about free will. This comes down to the function of a definition. Definitions are what you find in dictionaries, or early on in philosophy textbooks and articles to establish what a topic is about, and they explain how words relate to other words. They're not scientific proofs or scientific theories. They are linguistic concepts.

What are Definitions For?

The role of a definition is to establish a term everyone agrees with, so we all know what it is we're talking about. It needs to be a consensus term. When a free will libertarian says they think X about free will, and a compatibilists says they think Y about free will, what is it that makes both X and Y claims about free will? That needs to be something they agree on, otherwise they're not discussing the same topic.

How do philosophers solve this?

Fortunately philosophers have thought about this a lot, and they generally agree on how to solve this. They define free will in terms if it's linguistic function, and this is pretty easy to do due to the way in which this term originated.

The terms freedom, choice and moral responsibility, or rather their Greek equivalents, already existed in ancient Greece of course. The determinist Stoics and indeterminist Epicureans discussed these terms in the context of their metaphysical commitments, and the Stoics argued that these terms all had meanings fully consistent with their determinism, while the Epicureans disagreed and claimed that these terms could only be meaningful if the world is indeterministic. Over time a single term became understood to refer to the topic they were discussing, that term is free will (translated into English). So from the start, from before the term itself was coined, what it refers to was something determinists were giving an account of as being compatible with determinism.

Of course nowadays deterministic and indeterministic beliefs about free will have changed and developed, what we now call free will libertarianism emerged as a more developed set of ideas and the same is true of compatibilism. Nevertheless they are both sets of beliefs about the same topic.

What do contemporary philosophers say?

(1) "The term “free will” has emerged over the past two millennia as the canonical designator for a significant kind of control over one’s actions. Questions concerning the nature and existence of this kind of control (e.g., does it require and do we have the freedom to do otherwise or the power of self-determination?),...."

This was taken from an article written by two free will libertarian philosophers. So, free will may or may not require the freedom to do otherwise, and philosophers disagree on this. It is not itself the ability to do otherwise.

(2) The idea is that the kind of control or sense of up-to-meness involved in free will is the kind of control or sense of up-to-meness relevant to moral responsibility. (Double 1992, 12; Ekstrom 2000, 7–8; Smilansky 2000, 16; Widerker and McKenna 2003, 2; Vargas 2007, 128; Nelkin 2011, 151–52; Levy 2011, 1; Pereboom 2014, 1–2).

(3) ‘the strongest control condition—whatever that turns out to be—necessary for moral responsibility’ (Wolf 1990, 3–4; Fischer 1994, 3; Mele 2006, 17)

In Summary

Free Will: Roughly whatever kind of control over their actions you think someone must have in order to be held morally responsible for those actions. Something like the mental faculty necessary for moral responsibility.

Then there are the different beliefs about free will.

Free Will Libertarianism The belief that this process of control must be metaphysically indeterministic in some particular way for a person to be morally responsible.

Compatibilism The belief that this process of control can be (or must be) deterministic, and that human moral responsibility doesn't depend on free will libertarian metaphysical concepts.

Hard Determinism/Incompatibilism The belief that there is no kind of control that someone can have that justifies moral responsibility.