Neuroscience and free will

[Laird]

For focus, I'll respond only to this:

Laird: Your claim seems to be that there could be [necessary laws and/or events in/of the empirical world].

Paul: Not if we are talking about all possible worlds. I cannot cite a descriptive or prescriptive law that would hold in all possible worlds, except the "laws" of logic.

Given the absence of a counter-example, then, we have reached the point of recognition that laws and events are not necessary (because "possible worlds" are how necessity is evaluated in (modal) logic).

You stipulated earlier in this thread that what you mean by "determinism" is:

that some set of prior events necessarily produces a downstream event

If - which is the point at which we've arrived - laws and events aren't necessary, then they can't necessitate or be necessitated, which means that on this definition, nothing is deterministic. But nor is everything random.

This is basically what I've meant by the "random versus deterministic" dichotomy being a false one.

I'm not rejecting causation, just necessitated causation.

And to the extent that "determinism" simply means "causal" (and not "necessitated"), it is no threat to free will, because, as Sci has been fleshing out in this thread (amongst other fleshing), consciousness can freely (without "necessitation") participate in its own causal processes as it responds to the causal processes of other consciousnesses and the rest of the world in general.

That's why I've made a point of challenging you on the "necessity" of laws (and events). No necessity means no solid basis on which to deny the possibility of free will.

So, perhaps now you have the answer to the question you asked way, way back near the beginning of this thread. I hope so, because unless anything especially requiring a response comes up, I think I'll leave our exchange there...