Lack of free will as an objective disproof of Mormonism

[drumdude]

Sam Harris is well known for his very strong arguments against the existence of free will. A short summary is available here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4Oyi1T-HmU

Essentially, the idea of free will is rife with self-contradiction. For example, an omniscient God who already knows the future can by definition have no free will because they are not free to change the future. If they had free will to change the future, they would no longer be omniscient.

For humans, we do not even have the free will to choose which vegetable pops into our head first when asked to name one. To have free will, one must have had the ability to choose otherwise deliberately.

ChatGPT and its' successors are likely going to do a lot of the heavy lifting in showing practically that a materialistic neural network is sufficient to explain the appearance of consciousness. No spooky outside influence like an ethereal soul is required.

If free will can be demonstrated to be either logically impossible, or physically impossible, and completely unnecessary to explain human behavior and experience - that leaves Mormonism in a lot of trouble. Because the entire premise of Mormonism is that we made choices in the pre-existence. And we make choices here on Earth. And if those choices were not our own, then the supposed test that we are undergoing is just a predetermined farce.

This would make all of the other apologetic handwaving essentially meaningless. If they lose the free will argument, they've lost the whole enchilada.

[Don Bradley]

Dr. Drum Dude,

I am all for objective tests of various beliefs, including within the domain of religion.

A trouble with making such a test in this case is: 1) domain experts don't widely agree even that libertarian free will is ruled out by arguments such as Sam Harris's; and 2) there are other definitions of free will aside from the libertarian definition, and the Latter-day Saint scripture does not tell us which one to use.

For instance, Daniel Dennett argues that free will is compatible with soft determinism (we are able to do what we desire). And there are Latter-day Saint thinkers--such as BYU psychology professor Harold Miller and the late Clark Goble--who hold to precisely that same view of free will.

From another angle, David Bentley Hart and other Orthodox Christian thinkers argue that libertarian free will has never been what free will means in fundamental Christian theology. They cite early Christian thinkers to argue for a very different conception of free will, one which, despite not being materialist in its basis like Dennett's, doesn't require us to be actually able to do other than what we do.

Since Mormon scripture doesn't define free will in philosophical terms, it would be difficult to know whether free will as mentioned there has been disproved. So, I don't think your argument above works.

Don

[Physics Guy]

Essentially, the idea of free will is rife with self-contradiction. For example, an omniscient God who already knows the future can by definition have no free will because they are not free to change the future. If they had free will to change the future, they would no longer be omniscient.

This argument sounds bizarre to me. A little kid hates spinach and loves pizza; on their birthday they have absolute freedom to choose what's for lunch. So they always choose pizza and never choose spinach. That means they're not free at all, after all, because they cannot choose spinach?

I don't think that's a contradiction in the idea of free will. I think it's a confusion on the part of whomever is trying to make this kind of argument against free will.

It might be one way for me to prove to you that I was free, for you to select anything whatever for me to do, and for me then to do that thing. If there were never anything that I could not do, then I think you'd have to admit that I was free. But does the converse hold? Could you declare me un-free if I was unable to do one of the things you proposed?

I don't think so. I might be unable to do something just because I didn't want to do it, not even with the added incentive of proving my freedom to you. In fact it's obviously perverse to count me as free if and only if I always do exactly what you tell me to do. Freedom is doing what I want to do.

So, in particular, foreknowledge on the part of an omnipotent being is obviously not in conflict with that being's freedom. If God foreknows that an event will happen, then it's because God wants that event to happen. God could have made something else happen instead, if God had wanted that other thing. In that case it would have been that other thing that God would have foreknown.

[drumdude]

I understand that Sam’s argument is often dismissed, even by respected colleagues like Dennett.

We all know very well that we feel like we have free will. But the question is simply: are our choices the result of all prior causes or are they independent of prior causes and the result of something outside of those prior causes.

In order for our choices to be free, they have to be motivated by something like an external soul. Some radio transmission coming in from outside the universe. Equivalent to a tiny man inside the brain who is calling the shots regardless of the cascade of cause and effect.

I think that is magical thinking. It’s much more likely that everything we do, if we had a large enough computer to simulate, could be explained by prior causes and quantum probability. There’s no room in that system for an external signal that is independent of prior causes and/or random probability.

It’s probably not deterministic, because the quantum effects have an element of randomness, but that randomness should not be mistaken for you choosing something independently and deliberately.

For those who think we have free will, where do you believe that your free will arises from? Is it something like a radio signal being broadcast from another dimension into a receiver in our brains?

When I ask you to think for a vegetable and you think of carrot, when did you decide to think of carrot instead of celery? How did you make that free choice yourself?

[Rivendale]

I understand that Sam’s argument is often dismissed, even by respected colleagues like Dennett.

We all know very well that we feel like we have free will. But the question is simply: are our choices the result of all prior causes or are they independent of prior causes and the result of something outside of those prior causes.

In order for our choices to be free, they have to be motivated by something like an external soul. Some radio transmission coming in from outside the universe. Equivalent to a tiny man inside the brain who is calling the shots regardless of the cascade of cause and effect.

I think that is magical thinking. It’s much more likely that everything we do, if we had a large enough computer to simulate, could be explained by prior causes and quantum probability. There’s no room in that system for an external signal that is independent of prior causes and/or random probability.

It’s probably not deterministic, because the quantum effects have an element of randomness, but that randomness should not be mistaken for you choosing something independently and deliberately.

For those who think we have free will, where do you believe that your free will arises from? Is it something like a radio signal being broadcast from another dimension into a receiver in our brains?

When I ask you to think for a vegetable and you think of carrot, when did you decide to think of carrot instead of celery? How did you make that free choice yourself?

A immaterial soul free from the laws of physics but capable of acting on matter? And were you free to pick that soul? Rewinding the universe into the past with the same conditions is still subject to random quantum fluxuations. Are you free from those? Are you free from the genetic contributions of your ancestors or the nurturing you recieved from your upbringing?If so what is doing the willing? There is a great summation of Sam's ideas on free will on his podcast feed.

[dastardly stem]

Sam Harris' concept of free will I think is best explained by saying could we have done things differently than we did? if it were possible for us to rewind the clock and choose differently than what we did choose, we'd choose the same every time. That isn't to say we can't choose something by happenstance. I want to go to the store, so I go to the store, for instance. I chose that. But all things being equal I would choose that anyway. For instance my desire to buy whatever it was I was to buy would be there...and how so? because i wanted a new pair of pants after my old pair wore holes in the knee. I could have theoretically waited to go to the store to buy pants but the circumstances were already in place for me to choose what I did. In this way we're not freely choosing, but are often determined to choose. If it were possible for us to trace our decision back and gather all external forces, if you will, including the firing synapses in our brain, then we'd see the choice was less ours and more everything else. The problem is here, though, we'd never know. We'd never know if ever in any choice we've made if given the chance to replay it if we'd choose the same every time. For one if we replayed it in the sense of we'd go back in time and have our memory of already gone through the process, we'd easily be able to know what we had already chosen and could easily choose differently. But if we do that, then our choice isn't so free after all...we'd be choosing based on us wanting to choose differently. If we went back and were placed precisely in the same mindset and circumstance as previously when we choose again, I don't see how we'd choose differently. Even if the choice seems meaningless I still question whether we can say we'd choose differently. All that we do is a result of all that came before.

On Mormonism or Christianity, (I'd see it playing out the same) if God really thinks we have free will and will judge us based on what we do with it, and if our choices are completely dependent on all that came before that choice was made, then how would we really be choosing? God set us up. he programmed our thoughts and feelings. He situated our environment, our biology, our brains, and everything else. Consider a psychopath. Was the psychopath made a psychopath or did they become one? If God is the creator and knows by creating or beginning life, psychopaths will exist, then tracing it back, God conceived of psychopaths. Now it could be that any given psychopath lives a life and exits this realm no problem, no great offense. Or it could be that the psychopath was placed in just the right environment with everything needed to cause the psychopath to rage murderously for years. What choices does that psychopath really have? Presumably he'll have no choice as circumstance including environment and biology inevitably, presumably, caused his murderous intents. His wants and burning desires were not his. They were a result of biology, environment, and given God, God's conception.

On Mormonism there may be a bit of a way to escape this conclusion moreso than traditional Christianity, it seems to me. God doesn't create. he forms. He doesn't conceive of us and our make-up. We already are. But one must wonder what it'd be for God to organize spirits from intelligence. Is that much different than God making people out of nothing, as the traditional view has it? Are we inevitable products of what we become based on the specific formation God constructs individually? or are we the product of an equal formation for each of us and we chose from the moment of his forming us? I don't know there's much we can do about it though. If the former, we really have no choice...if the latter, our choices made us already before we ever came here...and presumably our biology and environment are a result of that previous process we can't remember, but we're still choosing based on that time. If so, we're choosing now based on what we chose then. And we can't really do much about that now, particularly since we have no idea what we were doing and choosing then.

Anyway, fun thoughts, i think.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Essentially, the idea of free will is rife with self-contradiction. For example, an omniscient God who already knows the future can by definition have no free will because they are not free to change the future. If they had free will to change the future, they would no longer be omniscient.

This argument sounds bizarre to me. A little kid hates spinach and loves pizza; on their birthday they have absolute freedom to choose what's for lunch. So they always choose pizza and never choose spinach. That means they're not free at all, after all, because they cannot choose spinach?

I don't think that's a contradiction in the idea of free will. I think it's a confusion on the part of whomever is trying to make this kind of argument against free will.

It might be one way for me to prove to you that I was free, for you to select anything whatever for me to do, and for me then to do that thing. If there were never anything that I could not do, then I think you'd have to admit that I was free. But does the converse hold? Could you declare me un-free if I was unable to do one of the things you proposed?

I don't think so. I might be unable to do something just because I didn't want to do it, not even with the added incentive of proving my freedom to you. In fact it's obviously perverse to count me as free if and only if I always do exactly what you tell me to do. Freedom is doing what I want to do.

So, in particular, foreknowledge on the part of an omnipotent being is obviously not in conflict with that being's freedom. If God foreknows that an event will happen, then it's because God wants that event to happen. God could have made something else happen instead, if God had wanted that other thing. In that case it would have been that other thing that God would have foreknown.

It’s not that the kid has a preference, but rather he was always destined to choose the pizza through deterministic factors beyond even his own comprehension. I don’t see how God is different simply because he can see the inevitable play-out of events.

- Doc

[Physics Guy]

In order for our choices to be free, they have to be motivated by something like an external soul.

This is where I, and I think Dennett and others as well, disagree. Determinism is perfectly consistent with the only kind of freedom that matters. And having an external soul wouldn't actually change anything significant, anyway.

Freedom isn't randomness. Having all my choices determined by nothing but a big rolling die in my heart, that would come up different each time if the same choice were posed, would be the worst kind of slavery. Nothing I did would ever mean anything. Freedom isn't having my choices determined by nothing. Freedom is having my choices determined by me.

Who I am, and what I want, may be determined by other things, certainly. Perhaps I want a carrot instead of an apple because I glimpsed an orange leaf while walking to work at the same moment some pheromone wafted into my nose. But so what? I want a carrot now, and I can haz carrot. That's freedom.

Suppose that the decisive factor in my preference for carrot actually is my immaterial soul. My immaterial soul wants a carrot. That's still just a factor which determines my choice, just like the leaf and the pheromone: somewhere out in the astral plane is a divine spark of soul that wants carrot. As long as that spark wants carrot, I have no power to choose apple. I could choose apple instead—but only if that spark were different. How is this different from the possibility that I could have chosen apple over carrot if the leaf had been redder and the pheromone more or less volatile?

Either way, I could have chosen differently, if and only if I had wanted to choose differently. In the materialistic model, there's a story about how and why I might want to choose differently, a story about leaves and pheromones. The only difference in the immaterial soul model is that the story is shorter: I'd want to choose an apple if I, meaning my soul, wanted an apple—no more questions, mike drop. That's not a difference between free and not free. It's just a difference in story length.

[Physics Guy]

It’s not that the kid has a preference, but rather he was always destined to choose the pizza through deterministic factors beyond even his own comprehension. I don’t see how God is different simply because he can see the inevitable play-out of events.

If the kid was predestined to choose pizza for reasons the kid can't conceive, then so what? The kid gets what the kid wants. How is this not being free?

But even if you don't want to count predestined choices as free ones, God shouldn't suffer that problem. God is not supposed to be determined by any external factors. If God foreknows something, it can only because God has decided that that's what will happen. If God chose something else, then it would happen instead—and God would be foreknowing that.

[Gadianton]

The problem is that Mormons can easily switch to compatibilism as their free-will doctrine and still accept the world is deterministic. While I think that's an Internet Mormon move, and clearly not in the spirit of how Mormonism has ever been taught, they apparently think differently. Left-wing Mormon intellectuals acknowledge some of those points Harris makes and jump aboard open theism.

I'm not fan enough of Sam Harris to know where he stands, but if he's a hard determinist then he has just as many fellow atheists who are compatibilists to fight with.

Interestingly, Jonathan Edwards, the Calvinists theologian and Danial Dennett, the first of the four horsemen of new Atheism, have basically the same arguments for compatibilism, and basically, the same theory of free will. So if you accept Dennett, then you have to accept that the Calvinist God isn't a horrible monster for consigning most of humanity to hell. (same with Mormons who jump ship to compatibilism, someone should troll DCP on Open Theism, see if he thinks it's okay and then point out he can't criticize Calvinism anymore.)