> But if we have no agency, nothing matters. There can be no morality: a criminal was always destined to commit a crime. It was never right for us to punish them, but that’s okay: we couldn’t have acted differently, so we shoulder no blame.
Right, and determinism seems likely to me to be correct, but I don't see the issue. Whether we'd like things to matter has no impact on whether they really do, but the obvious conclusion along the same lines that "saves" us is that you should act as if you believe in free will (e.g. enacting punishments) even if you don't. Either there is free will, so you behaved correctly, or there isn't, so you didn't really decide how to act anyway.
1-We do have machinery that performs a resolution of next action/thought/belief (based on external input, current state, etc.) and we possibly just sense that action as "choice"
2-It seems pretty unlikely that the resolution process could be cleanly deterministic and repeatable given quantum stuff, meaning some step in the resolution process hovering on the edge of two options could go either way depending on the brain's electromagnetic soup's current state.
3-Our emotions are critical for our survival, driving choices that help us short and long term, and it seems that one of those core drivers is a sense of agency. Even if we don't have free will in the magic sense of causing electrons (or whatever) to suddenly turn left to support our choice, it would still be critical for us to have a sense that our actions and efforts all matter, so those feelings are probably built into the system.
Note:
This assumes there is no special magic somewhere that defies our current understanding of the universe and it just hasn't been figured out yet.
The quantum stuff appears to me to very much be that the universe is deterministic if and only if it's deterministic. Like, if you imagine that we're all something like vibrational modes on an expanding "drum head" (which, as far as I know is very roughly basically what QFT says, but I've never actually studied it), then there's no issue as far as I know. The initial state of the universe set everything in motion, and the global geometry of the universe admits certain wave propagations or it doesn't. Could be that I just don't know enough, but I've always found the phrasing of "super-determinism" to be odd; obviously, if the universe is deterministic, you don't get to choose what experiments you run. That's just normal determinism.
ndriscoll · · focus · HN ↗
Right, and determinism seems likely to me to be correct, but I don't see the issue. Whether we'd like things to matter has no impact on whether they really do, but the obvious conclusion along the same lines that "saves" us is that you should act as if you believe in free will (e.g. enacting punishments) even if you don't. Either there is free will, so you behaved correctly, or there isn't, so you didn't really decide how to act anyway.
RaftPeople · · focus · HN ↗
1-We do have machinery that performs a resolution of next action/thought/belief (based on external input, current state, etc.) and we possibly just sense that action as "choice"
2-It seems pretty unlikely that the resolution process could be cleanly deterministic and repeatable given quantum stuff, meaning some step in the resolution process hovering on the edge of two options could go either way depending on the brain's electromagnetic soup's current state.
3-Our emotions are critical for our survival, driving choices that help us short and long term, and it seems that one of those core drivers is a sense of agency. Even if we don't have free will in the magic sense of causing electrons (or whatever) to suddenly turn left to support our choice, it would still be critical for us to have a sense that our actions and efforts all matter, so those feelings are probably built into the system.
Note: This assumes there is no special magic somewhere that defies our current understanding of the universe and it just hasn't been figured out yet.
ndriscoll · · focus · HN ↗