Free will and determinism

This one claims that the previous study saying the RP doesn't appear in deliberate decisions is wrong and that urgency has nothing to do with the apparition of the signal.

I mean they are always going to be claiming that, given psychology + nascent neuroscience is desperate to seem as reliable as (classical) physics...still unclear what readiness potential is. I'd always assume there is some kind of preparation in the body to act.

Here, we used a temporally-extended decision-making task involving sequential presentation of evidence items to investigate the neural correlates of how choices emerge when they are underdetermined (i.e. not strongly supported) by the available evidence. In particular, we investigated two neural signals that might reflect the evolution of a decision variable and action initiation: the P3 event-related potential and the Readiness Potential (RP).

If choices are underdetermined by available evidence this goes back to what Dennet said - it's like picking a random pickle jar from a shelf where they are all identical. It isn't a "decision" of consequence.

But ultimately you'll have to choose in your own life how to interpret these findings.

I think a large portion of free will deniers like the idea because it absolves them from poor decisions in life through. so it's not fully "logical"

I'm a free will "denier," but I don't think it's because it absolves me from poor decisions. Made plenty of them, take responsibility for all of them.

As most folks here know, I'm a free will skeptic because I have yet to hear an explanation of how I make a free decision. Could be one, just haven't heard it.

~~ Paul

@quirkybrainmeat

Paul is referring to this thread. I feel that the position "Free will can exist in some possible universe" (which may be ours) wins hands down, but you should go through it and decide for yourself.

As an aside, I've no idea how anyone takes responsibility without choosing to, unless we mean the arbitrary illusion of having processes beyond one's self ape what would be such choice. But that, to me, seems a very different thing from the real deal.

I'm a free will "denier," but I don't think it's because it absolves me from poor decisions. Made plenty of them, take responsibility for all of them.

As most folks here know, I'm a free will skeptic because I have yet to hear an explanation of how I make a free decision. Could be one, just haven't heard it.

~~ Paul

The absence of an explanation as to how is not an overriding argument in the face of an individual experiencing the process.  Do I not love my wife because I cannot explain how love is possible?

The absence of an explanation as to how is not an overriding argument in the face of an individual experiencing the process.  Do I not love my wife because I cannot explain how love is possible?

I think the two are related, to a degree. Love is a part of consciousness, so it's irreducible and intrinsic.

Causation, which is the central question with free will, is also intrinsic and at some base level irreducible. This level isn't capture by physics though, as per atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell:

"All that physics gives us is certain equations giving abstract properties of their changes. But as to what it is that changes, and what it changes from and to—as to this, physics is silent." 

As to how Consciousness and Causation might be related...that's what the 65 page thread I linked to above is about...

https://neurophil-freewill.org/
Thoughts on this project?

https://neurophil-freewill.org/
Thoughts on this project?

Hard to say...They don't seem to have any of the really interesting people like Koch and Tononi for IIT, Hammeroff and Penrose for Orch Or, etc...

I'm a free will guy but I don't have a strong rational basis for why I feel this way.  Its much more emotional for me: I can't imagine this entire existence (mine, yours, everyone's) is just deterministic physicalism.  It doesn't "feel" right.  (Hardly comforting to my rational, scientifically-sensitive self.  )

Neither can I - which is just one reason that I think physical science is seriously incomplete.

A standard physics explanation for reality has no room for mental phenomena, just physical phenomena in the brain. QM also injects randomness into this picture, but a world that is deterministic plus a shot of randomness also doesn't seem to be capable of supporting mind.

It is worth pointing out that free will underpins the legal system. I mean if I hated someone enough to decide (a form of free will) to kill them, I'd be guilty if I followed through on that act. However if I accidentally killed someone (say with a car), I'd get a much smaller sentence, if any.

Anyone who takes determinism seriously, must live a very strange existence. I think most who claim to believe in determinism simply kid themselves while they are performing in various professional roles.

Hard to say...They don't seem to have any of the really interesting people like Koch and Tononi for IIT, Hammeroff and Penrose for Orch Or, etc...

They did interview a interview with Tononi however:
https://youtu.be/0hex5katLGk

Also wonder how they thought about part of the funding being from the John Templeton Foundation? Given that I heard some people saying it was not trustworthy for supposedly promoting Intelligent Design and climate change denial? If those opinions are widespread among academics, they could affect the careers of the involved neuroscientists.

A standard physics explanation for reality has no room for mental phenomena, just physical phenomena in the brain. QM also injects randomness into this picture, but a world that is deterministic plus a shot of randomness also doesn't seem to be capable of supporting mind.

I don't know if QM is "random" so much as indeterministic. After all you can predict with a high degree of accuracy things like half-life, electron position, etc. It's just stochastic rather than exact.

So it's obvious[ly] not deterministic, but random to me would be unbound. If anything QM phenomena seem to be at least somewhat akin to the character of a person - predictable in the aggregate but not necessarily in the particulars. Obvious[ly] what follows is not a perfect match to what I just said, but Nobel Prize Winner Roger Penrose has had thoughts that seem similar to mine:

“An element of proto-consciousness takes place whenever a decision is made in the universe,” he said. “I’m not talking about the brain. I’m talking about an object which is put into a superposition of two places. Say it’s a speck of dust that you put into two locations at once. Now, in a small fraction of a second, it will become one or the other. Which does it become? Well, that’s a choice. Is it a choice made by the universe? Does the speck of dust make this choice? Maybe it’s a free choice. I have no idea.”

But the indeterminacy that’s intrinsic to quantum theory would suggest that causal connections break down in the conscious brain. Is Penrose making the case for free will?

“Not quite, though at this stage, it looks like it,” he said. “It does look like these choices would be random. But free will, is that random?” Like much of his thinking, there’s a “yes, but” here. His claims are provocative, but they’re often provisional. And so it is with his ideas about free will. “I’ve certainly grown up thinking the universe is deterministic. Then I evolved into saying, ‘Well, maybe it’s deterministic but it’s not computable.’ But is it something more subtle than that? Is it several layers deeper? If it’s something we use for our conscious understanding, it’s going to be a lot deeper than even straightforward, non-computable deterministic physics. It’s a kind of delicate borderline between completely deterministic behavior and something which is completely free.”