Neuroscience and free will

[Laird]

It depends on how the single-event GCDEs are worded. If one of them is nothing more than a statement of the event, then I don't know why we'd call it a law.

We wouldn't, and I stipulated as much in the paragraphs above.

However, if all you are saying is that all GCDEs are descriptive, then that is true regardless of the number of events they describe.

So you agree with the contention?

That was an incidental comment by me, so I'm not sure why it's important.

I find that (my emboldening) hard to believe. You're not stupid.

All I'm saying is that even though a descriptive law does not prescribe a set of events, it is possible that all those events had to have happened the way they did.

And all I'm pointing out to you is that if the events "had to have" happened in accordance with a law, then that law is not descriptive but is prescriptive. You can't have it both ways. If laws are purely descriptive, then it necessarily follows that events could have happened in some other way. And to allow for the possibility that events could not have happened in some other way is to allow for the possibility that laws are prescriptive.

So, which is it?

If I could describe a free decision logically, we would not be having this conversation. Please don't turn this conversation into a homework assignment for me that I cannot complete.

Pick any multi-stage decision you've made where you weren't forced into it. List the stages.

There. You're done. Homework doesn't have to be onerous.

Take into account all the factors that are inputs to a free decision in one step? The only way that could be done in one step is to look up the decision in an n-dimensional table, where n is the number of factors.

Ha. Consciousness is not computation; the possibilities are far richer.