I'd like to better understand how compatibilists conceive of free will.[1] LW is a known hotbed of compatibilism, so here's my question:
Suppose that determinism is true. When I face a binary choice,[2] there are two relevantly-different states of the world I could be in:[3]
State A: Past events HA have happened, current state of the world is A, I will choose CA, future FA will happen.
State B: Past events HB have happened, current state of the world is B, I will choose CB, future FB will happen.
When I make my choice (CA or CB), I'm choosing/revealing which of those two states of the world are (my) reality. They're package deals: CA follows from HA just as surely as it leads to FA, and the same holds for state B.
Which seems to give me just as much control[4] over the past as I have over the future. In whatever sense I 'exercise free will' to make CA real and bring about FA, I also make it the case that HA is the true history.
My question is: Does this bother you at all, and if not, why not?[5]
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Yes, I've done my own reading, though admittedly it's been a while. I never found a satisfying (to me) answer to this question, and to the best of my recollection I rarely saw it clearly addressed in a form I recognised. If you want to link me to a pre-existing answer, please do, but please be specific: less 'read Dennett' and more 'read this passage of this work'.
- ^
Maybe no real choice is truly binary, but for the sake of simplicity let's say this one is. I don't think that changes anything important.
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For simplicity I'm taking the physical laws as a given. I don't think that matters unless free will involves in some sense choosing which set of physical laws holds in reality.
- ^
Not necessarily in every sense in which you might want to use the word 'control'; you might define that word such that it only applies to causal influence forward in time. But yes in the sense that whatever I can do to make my world the one with FA in it, I can do to make my world the one with HA in it.
- ^
If your answer involves the MWI or something like it, I would appreciate if you explained (the relevant bits of) how you conceive of personal identity and consciousness within that framework.
It seems to me that your confusion is contending there are two past/present states (HA+A / HB+B) when in fact reality is simply H -> S -> C. There is one history, one state, and one choice that you will end up making. The idea that there is a HA and HB and so on is wrong, since that history H has already happened and produced state S.
Further, C is simply the output of your decision algorithm, which result we don't know until the algorithm is run. Your choice could perhaps be said to reveal something previously not known about H and S, but it doesn't distinguish between two histories or states, only your state of information about the single history/state that already existed. (It also doesn't determine anything about H and S that isn't "this decision algorithm outputs C under condition S".)
Indeed, even presenting it as if there is actually a CA and CB from which you will choose is itself inaccurate: you're already going to choose whatever you're going to choose, and that output is already determined even if you have yet to run the algorithm that will let you find out what that choice is. The future states CA and CB never actually exist either -- they are simulations you create in your mind as part of the decision algorithm.
Or to put it another way, since the future state C is a complex mix of your choice and other events taking place in the world, it will not actually match whatever simulated option you thought about. So the entire A/B disjunction throughout is about distinctions that only exist in your mental map, not in the territory outside your head.
So, the real world is H->S->C, and in your mind, you consider simulated or hypothetical A's and B's. Your decision process resolves which of A and B you feel accurately reflects H/S/C, but cannot affect anything but C. (And even there, the output was already determinable-in-principle before you started -- you just didn't know what the output was going to be.)
Direct quotes:
And the footnote:
This is only trivially true in the sense of saying "whatever I can do to arrive at McDonalds, I can do to make my world the one where I walked in the direction of McDonalds". This is ordinary reality and nothing to be "bothered" by -- which obviates the original question's apparent presupposition that something weird is going o... (read more)