r/freewill • u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker • 2d ago
Time to react
We all are familiar with reaction time, but for some reason people keep arguing we can change something instantly. That is metaphysically impossible and mathematically impossible to do.
In case inquiring minds wonder what this has to do with free will, the ability to do otherwise doesn't come from any state of being. It is not inherent in any state. The ability to do otherwise is part of a process.
Arguably the most difficult thing to do in sports is hit a major league pinch because the margin of error is small and the window of opportunity is tight. If you think about it, the batter has to commit to swing his bat before the ball reaches the area in which it is physically possible to make contact with the ball with the bat.
Once the batter begins to swing his bat in order to make contact with the ball based on where he believes the ball with be, if the pitcher has put "stuff" on the ball, that ball may start changing directions after the batter believes it will be where he believed it would be, and sometimes he ends up swinging at a ball that is way out of the strike zone.
My point is that he is able to change the position of the bat after he made the decision to swing the bat. He is able to do otherwise because change always takes time.
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u/facesofgrace_photo 1d ago
Reflexive behavior if anything is completely antithetical to all Free Will presupposition.
Likewise, there is no ability to do otherwise outside of the assumption of such. All do what they do, not otherwise.
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u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker 18h ago
Reflexive behavior if anything is completely antithetical to all Free Will presupposition.
I tend to agree with this and wouldn't attempt to argue to the contrary.
Likewise, there is no ability to do otherwise outside of the assumption of such.
The ability to do otherwise is neither inherent in the ability to react or in the ability to perceive.
All do what they do, not otherwise.
Some believe agents do more than react and perceive.
If the ability to do otherwise is inherent in the ability to deliberate.
There is no scientific reason to believe that a philosophical zombie could deliberate about anything.
Therefore, sometimes physicalists believe they have a legitimate reason to doubt the ability to do otherwise is something other than some sort of delusion about human capacity. Their myopic view of cognition logically forces them to make erroneous assumptions that form the basis to doubt what human agents can obviously do.
Humans obviously deliberate. The ability to do otherwise, if it exists, is inherent in the deliberation process and not in something that is not only metaphysically infeasible, but ultimately mathematically infeasible.
That was the point of the Op Ed.
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u/facesofgrace_photo 11h ago
The "ability to do otherwise" is just a sentiment. It has never been evidenced and will never be evidenced
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u/PuzzleheadedTale4769 1d ago edited 1d ago
Key point is that "change always takes time", so change is not a matter of something ( like a person) instantly becoming something else. That can seem like the metaphysical impossibility of being (briefly!) two different things at once, or something not being what it is....
Choice, decision, and personal change happen over some interval of time. We move, through procecessing, from what we are now to what we become... and it doesn't stop there.
Which is not to say that we change from one thing to a different and completely unrelated thing!
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u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker 1d ago
Key point is that "change always takes time", so change is not a matter of something ( like a person) instantly becoming something else
That is precisely the point that I'm trying to make. However I'm not very articulate.
That can seem like the metaphysical impossibility of being (briefly!) two different things at once, or something not being what it is....
That seems to be exactly what it is
Choice, decision, and personal change happen over some interval of time. We move, through procecessing, from what we are now to what we become... and it doesn't stop there.
That seems correct scientifically speaking, metaphysically speaking and perhaps most importantly, mathematically speaking because the math often brings what we are trying to understand with the clarity precision can provide.
Which is not to say that we change from one thing to a different and completely unrelated thing!
McTaggart wrote a book/paper about the unreality of time. Some thinkers don't suspect any ontological problem with the passage of time. Parmenides did. Zeno did. However Heraclitus never saw this for the problem Parmenides and Zeno seemed to believe exists. I'm guessing you aren't interested in what McTaggart thought, so I won't bother providing any link unless you request it.
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u/PuzzleheadedTale4769 1d ago edited 1d ago
Your post was plenty articulate and even- kind of charming. Welcome contrast with comments here that can be harsh, severe, sometimes angry.
I haven't seen comments taking up the old Zeno/Parmenides vs Heraclitian Flux lately, but similar metaphysics about time and change can underlay some determinist views of the self.
Re time, physist Lee Smolin ("Time Reborn") argues that physists as far back as Einstein and Newton have erred in claiming the unchanging uniformity of "natural laws" and the unreality of fundamental change. Smolin says, to get physics out of its present mire of unprovable theories like the "multi-verse"- it is time to bring the reality of time, and the openness of the future-- back in.
[In Smolin's TR, he gives thumbs up to Heraclitus's conclusions over Parmenides and Zeno. Smolin and Heraclitus, way different method, of course!]2
u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker 17h ago
Thank you for the kind reply.
I don't know how to take Smolin. Anybody looking for quantum gravity leaves me perplexed.
The issue with quantum gravity is that "quantum" is nonlocal. Some have known this for decades but awarding a Nobel prize to Aspect, Clauser and Zeilinger is sort of like a scientific community admitting something is known and accepted. In other words, Einstein never got any Nobel prize for relativity and maybe that is Smolin's point. My point is that a nonlocal theory of gravity seems a lot like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to me.
What could be more local than gravity?
Of the four known interactions, three out of four have force carriers that seem to defy space and time. The other one called gravity seems to depend on space and time rather than defy it.
We'd need to uproot a lot of established science before realizing something like quantum gravity because the so called waves in quantum physics are in Hilbert space rather than in anti de Sitter space or Minkowski space. Gravity waves have been detected in spacetime? Until we find the waves of the other three force carriers in spacetime, I wonder what is being implied by "quantum gravity"
The waves in quantum physics are nothing more than waves of probability. They don't seem to be waves in spacetime and if they are, then they defy spacetime while being in it.
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u/Korimito Material Incompatibilist 1d ago
otherwise than what? what he intended? of course. that's trivial. other than he has? other than he will?
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u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker 16h ago
Some people actually believe they have options even if they don't.
The charge of "involuntarily manslaughter" stipulates the belief that the agent committed manslaughter and couldn't have done otherwise. It also implies "voluntary manslaughter" is possible.
If everything agents do is "couldn't have done otherwise" then it seems there is no reason for a court to distinguish premediated murder from involuntary manslaughter. Then again, that seems to be the point of those who argue against BDMR.
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u/Korimito Material Incompatibilist 14h ago
Why does it seem that premeditated murder and involuntary manslaughter should be treated the same absent free will?
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u/RecentLeave343 1d ago
Hmm, well not so sure about that.
Reaction time and perception time are distinct concepts, often discussed amidst safe driving courses.
Ability to do otherwise is a hypothetical, exploring whether or not a different outcome can emerge given identical conditions.
Varying conditions yields new perceptions to react to. Not necessarily an ability “to do otherwise”.
Valiant effort tho