Neuroscience and free will

Then I can only encourage you to (re)read the notes in full. This is pretty much their entire point, Paul. It's fine if you want to present a counter-argument, but it's not fine for you to fail to recognise the argument in the first place.

Wouldn't it be easier if you simply the quoted the parts that state that the definition of descriptive laws entails that no events can happen out of necessity?

I think you're mistaken here. I assume you're referring to "D₄₇₂₉" and "D₅₃₂₂", but there are no proper names in those descriptions, simply because the descriptions are only alluded to. You seem to be assuming that the actual descriptions which are alluded to would require proper names, but I have shown you via examples of my own devising that this is not the case (see the example "Descriptive law"s I offered under 2.1 and 2.2 in this post).

The examples of descriptive laws that you give in that post are not specific to a single event, even though they are supposed to be describing a single event. I agree that you can probably include enough ordinal numbers and other identifiers to narrow it down, but then we have laws based on the entire history of the universe. I suppose you might call those "laws," but I would tend to call them "scripts."

My view is that this is not merely a "primary worry" but a fatality (especially re the bit I've emboldened). Is your view different? If so, then why? How do you justify that different view?

I'm just discussing the meaning of prescriptive and descriptive laws.

So, naturally, because you

(1) are keen to, so far as possible, work out for yourself what is true, and
(2) recognise as fallacious the argument that "some philosopher once published a paper arguing that X is true, therefore it is possible that X is true"

you enthusiastically devoured the paper, analysed its arguments, and came to a conclusion as to whether or not they were sound (and even cogent).

Please, then, go ahead and share with us that conclusion and how/why you reached it.

I didn't read the paper at all. But I'm glad it afforded you the opportunity to give me some more condescending crap.

Justify the statement I've emboldened. Explain or describe how this is (or could be) possible.

That "it's possible that we could have a law that describes events that must happen a certain way in all possible worlds"? Because there may be events that follow logically and inexorably from their precursors and logic holds in all possible worlds. How can we possibly know that there are no such events?

My contention is that if laws don't have prescriptive causal power, then events are not (cannot be, in virtue of what laws mean) necessitated. Reading can only affect that contention to the extent that it supplies new definitions or meanings for "descriptive", "prescriptive", "law", and "necessitated" - but then we'd be talking about something different than we have been...

I disagree. I think you are endowing the choice between prescriptive and descriptive laws with power that it does not have. We can't say "I don't think there are any events that happen out of necessity" and then assign a name to this idea and then argue that since the name means "laws just describe events" therefore there are no events that happen out of necessity. This appears to be the argument.

Now, if we want to invent the term "Descriptive Model of the Universe" (caps) and define it to mean that there are no events that happen out of necessity, that's fine. But we should realize that the claim about events is a just-so claim. We have no evidence that no events happen out of necessity. We can certainly agree that some events do not happen out of necessity, but that is different.

So why don't we do that so we can continue? I will stipulate that we are operating under the Descriptive Model of the Universe and no event ever happens out of necessity.

~~ Paul

P.S.: Under descriptive laws, (1) can there be fundamental existants such as quarks? (2) Can these fundamental existants have attributes, such as mass and spin? (3) Can those attributes cause the existants to interact in specific ways?