What are the benefits of understanding our free will?

[Eise]

19 hours ago, iNow said:

it’s still individual cars and drivers which lead to that congestion in aggregate and any behavioral focus must be at the vehicle/driver level.

Yes. But there is also the opposite: congestion influencing drivers. They get irritated, their cars use more gas, local pressure on the road is increasing where the congestions are, etc. So the congestion, as congestion, has impact on the components it is built off. Maybe an example of @TheVat's down causation?

What you are suggesting is e.g. the impact of drugs on the brain. By changing something at a lower level (chemistry) one also changes mental phenomena.

[iNow]

3 hours ago, Eise said:

the congestion, as congestion, has impact on the components it is built off.

Yes, agreed. See also my repeated mention of how environment and fatigue and hunger and thirst and illness etc anll influence us mentally despite our loud claims of having freedom. Fairly sure this is another example of us being on same page.

[MigL]

One might say that the flow pulses of 'congestion' is an emergent property of the individual drivers/vehicles.

And that reminds me ( of another video I watched to get my science fix during last week's 'sabbatical' ).
Did we ever establish in the preceding 20 pages, the definition of 'free will' and whether it actually exists as such ?
( sorry to drag you back into this, Eise )

 

[StringJunky]

36 minutes ago, MigL said:

One might say that the flow pulses of 'congestion' is an emergent property of the individual drivers/vehicles.

Exactly, the collective behaviour becomes a new entity. At that point we can forget about the cars and the people and just look at the whole geographic area and seeing this 'thing' in it called  'congestion', varying over time. Congestion itself  Is the sum effect of all history-paths from all involved elements.

Edited December 26, 2023 by StringJunky
added

[iNow]

6 hours ago, MigL said:

Did we ever establish in the preceding 20 pages, the definition of 'free will'

Yes, many definitions were established, and various participants have been exercising their freedom to choose completely different ones when posting.

6 hours ago, MigL said:

and whether it actually exists as such

Depends entirely on the definition one selects.

Welcome to philosophy… where we’ll be speaking of the exact same thing without making any significant progress for many centuries to come. 

[StringJunky]

12 hours ago, iNow said:

Yes, many definitions were established, and various participants have been exercising their freedom to choose completely different ones when posting.

Depends entirely on the definition one selects.

Welcome to philosophy… where we’ll be speaking of the exact same thing without making any significant progress for many centuries to come. 

We have Newtonian, General and quantum theories of gravity. Use what works in a particular situation.

[MigL]

Not quite the same.
Scientific theories have to fit observations, otherwise they are simply WAGs.
If we have no observations, but simply varying definitions of an abstract concept, then ALL are WAGs.

I don't often agree with S Hossenfelder, but in this case she makes some very valid points.

[Eise]

On 12/26/2023 at 9:48 PM, MigL said:

Did we ever establish in the preceding 20 pages, the definition of 'free will' and whether it actually exists as such ?

Nope. I tried to bend the discussion in that direction, finding the most useful definition, but it seems everyone wants to stick to their definition. I think this is the main problem when discussing free will: people first decide if we have free will or not, and then rationalise their viewpoint. 

I gave it a try in the other free will thread:

But it did not help. I have the impression, that nobody ever gave a good argument against the concept of compatibilist free will. All arguments given are against libertarian free will, which for me is like arguing that circles have no angles. The concept of libertarian free will is just as incoherent as a circle with angles.