Why are questions of determinism misplaced with regards to this topic?
I don't think it matters either way.
I guess it depends whether you're interested in the philosophical question itself (does free will exist) or the practical question (does it even matter).
If we're talking about the philosophical argument then determinism is fundamental to the question. If our conscious state is just an 'observer' experiencing thoughts that are the result of deterministic reactions in our brain, then our perception of free will is just an illusion.
If you try meditating for a bit, you soon discover that you have very little control over the thoughts that appear in your minds-eye. And, as soon as you try to command those thoughts, you start to question whether it's your conscious self that has control of those thoughts about the thoughts, or if it's your sub-conscious self having those thoughts that you are merely observing. Some people find it very freeing and others find it terrifying — It's quite easy to have an existential crisis if you think about it for too long.
That being said, on a practical level, it doesn't (and probably can never) affect how we actually live our lives. So in that sense, I can see the argument for saying it doesn't really matter. Of course, then you get into "if we live our lives as if we possess free will even if it's illusory, we ipso facto have free will" and you can go around in circles for days.
Do you mean that, even if we proved that consciousness was deterministic (and thus there was no true free will), we would still act as if we had free will so the question is moot?
Sort of but not quite - like I can see why some might frame it that way but personally I'd go slightly further than that, just because some outside observer could in theory predict in advance that we'd make a given choice under some circumstances doesn't really negate free will for us IMO. It might be that with perfect information someone could theoretically predict the choices we'll make but so what... I mean I guess it depends on how we define free will tbh... does it require some magical property that can't quite be defined? We're conscious, sentient beings, right? Though we don't fully understand consciousness. We still make choices whether those choices can be predicted or not. I don't think the presence or absence of some randomness from the perspective of an observer makes much difference re: free will from our perspective.
Whether some theoretical observer with perfect information can predict we'd do X with absolute certainty given some conditions or whether they can predict we'd do x with p=0.7 (for the sake of argument) doesn't really change anything for us.
I think we're coming at this from opposite ends — you're talking about whether an outside observer could predict our actions ahead of when we experience the decision to take that action.
I'm more interested in whether the source of that action comes from our conscious self or whether the conscious self is merely along for the ride and the decisions we think we're making 'of our own free will' are actually the result of something else.
But on the question of "does it matter if an outside observer can predict our actions ahead of when we experience the decision to take that action" — it matters if the outside observer is able to do something with that information. If they know what we're going to do before we do, they can make all sorts of decisions that could affect us positively or negatively.
It might not make a difference to us as conscious decision makers but it could make a difference to us more generally. Of course, if the universe is deterministic, then any action the 3rd party takes for/against us was always going to happen anyway, so there's not much we can do about it.
Secondly, why do you believe the universe isn't deterministic?
Are you basing that on the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics and our lack of a unified theory to combine QM and general relativity?
Essentially yeah, there are things that we can't currently give any deterministic explanation for. I'm not saying I necessarily believe it is for sure, just my current prior is that it isn't.
I guess it kind of fits the simulation thing for people who are into that - if you've got certain things that don't need to be given a state until they're observed then your super alien who built the simulation can save on memory etc.... sort of like a computer game where not everything in a world is drawn in advance. Likewise, if you've got a chunk of uranium atoms say, you just need to know that some number of them will randomly decay at some point in time, that can be done in real-time, doesn't need to be completely determined which will go off when etc...
Yeah, that's fair enough. Ultimately we just don't know enough about the quantum world and it's relation to the 'real' world yet, especially how that relates to brain function. I'd love to be around when we finally figure out a Unified Theory but I'm not holding out much hope that it will be achieved in my lifetime.
