Free will and determinism

Finding Free Will: Causation in an Indeterministic World

Thomas Hebner

Free will is an oft disputed topic in popular culture, religion, and philosophy, yet much of its refutations are built upon theories of determinism and necessitation, whose conclusions are untenable. Any discussion of free will is necessarily a discussion of cause and effect, so any claims made about freedom must first establish what it is to be a free agent. This thesis challenges deterministic causation, showing that even classical Newtonian mechanics gives us indeterminate solutions. In doing this, we show that causation itself is a fundamental truth, built from an ontology of causal powers, the implications of which we explore in detail. From this metaphysical framework we explore a plausible route by which free will may emerge: the theory of Agent Causation, which argues that at the core of every free action is an irreducible causal relation between a person and some appropriate mental or internal event that triggers later elements of the action. Agent Causation will be shown to be a theory of causal powers implied by our ontology,
with responsibility and agency thereby emerging.

Free will is inherently an issue of causation and how we fit into it. We will argue that the ‘never-ending disputation’ should be framed in terms of causation, which must be defined as more than a common-sense idea. The emergence of indeterminism, while not a complete rejection, challenges our beliefs about causality writ large: the idea of the causal chain is key, for without a mechanism of cause and effect there is no agency, so how can there be causation in an indeterministic world? Much of the effort at the start will thus be to craft some idea of causation, with some surprising results.

...These models will be explored in greater depth. While they are discussed, we must keep in mind the ultimate goal: free will. Once established in theory, they will be extended to the physical world as an approximate theory of Agent Causation, with agents classified as “powerful” beings capable of acting, willing, and perceiving change. From this model, which has been established and based entirely on prior theoretical work from Anscombe, Aristotle, Marmodoro, Mumford, Anjum, and Molnar, we will discuss some theories of free will in the presence of indeterminism discussed primarily by Timothy O’Connor. Once each view is established, we will attempt to fit or show the inability to fit the theory with the Powerist theory discussed at the beginning of the paper. The model with best fit--Timothy O’Connor’s Agent Causation—will be analyzed further, discussing challenges with the picture and concluding with what we have accomplished.

Well I don't know, on a PC (which is typical) you have a set the computer reads an opcode (a set of bits) that forces it to perform some sort of test - e.g. compare a specific register with zero. This sets a bit in another register known as the condition codes. Then the computer reads the next opcode, which forces it to perform the following if the condition codes are set - it reads some more bits that are (typically) added to the Instruction Pointer (yey another register). 

That is a bit rough and ready, but I can't see a decision in that lot, and anyway, at that level there is absolutely no context.

Computers compress everything into a mush like that, which is very hard to think of as decision making!

I think like Sci - the only decision that is really made, is done by the programmer - maybe shared by someone who specifies what the program is meant to do.

David

"which forces it to perform the following if the condition codes are set" [emphasis mine]

There's your decision right there. There is either a branch instruction that skips the instructions you don't want to execute if the condition is a certain way, or there is an instruction that is otherwise conditioned on the condition code. Different code paths are taken depending on the condition code.

The only way you can claim that computers don't make decisions is if you define "decision" to mean "libertarian decisions made by humans with free will." Then you'll need to come up with a different word for what computers do when they conditionalize execution. And then you have to sit back in despair while the rest of the world does not adopt your new definitions.

~~ Paul

Finding Free Will: Causation in an Indeterministic World

Thomas Hebner

I'll add that paper to my list. I'm reading the "Causation Is Not Your Enemy" paper now, and finding it quite good. I'm about halfway through. I'll give you a book report after I finish.

~~ Paul

I'll add that paper to my list. I'm reading the "Causation Is Not Your Enemy" paper now, and finding it quite good. I'm about halfway through. I'll give you a book report after I finish.

~~ Paul

Well ideally you would read all those papers, top to bottom...

edit: I mean this seriously, I do think the order matters.

Well ideally you would read all those papers, top to bottom...

edit: I mean this seriously, I do think the order matters.

I read the first three. I didn't find them particularly exciting. But anyhoo, I'll carry on.

~~ Paul

Some of physicist Henry Stapp's thoughts on quantum indeterminism:

Consciousness & Chance:

Stapp sees the physical world as a structure of tendencies or probabilities within the world of the mind. He thinks that the introduction of an irreducible element of chance into nature via the collapse of the wave function, as described in most forms of quantum theory, is unacceptable. The element of conscious choice is seen by him as removing chance from nature.

Also some of his thoughts on Mind & Free Will:




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He also has a book Quantum Theory & Free Will:

This book explains, in simple but accurate terms, how orthodox quantum mechanics works. The author, a distinguished theoretical physicist, shows how this theory, realistically interpreted, assigns an important role to our conscious free choices. Stapp claims that mainstream biology and neuroscience, despite nearly a century of quantum physics, still stick essentially to failed classical precepts in which mental intentions have no effect upon our bodily actions. He shows how quantum mechanics provides a rational basis for a better understanding of this connection, even allowing an explanation of certain phenomena currently held to be “paranormal”. These ideas have major implications for our understanding of ourselves and our mental processes, and thus also for the meaningfulness of our lives.

Some of physicist Henry Stapp's thoughts on quantum indeterminism:

A New Approach to the Measurement Problem of Quantum Mechanics

Stanley A. Klein

...How do we get actualities? One possibility is that there is an aspect to the universe that we’ve mentioned earlier in connection with Henry Stapp. Namely the topic of Mind. It could be that there is an aspect of the universe that is connected with animal brains, called mind. That aspect can solve not just one mystery, but two. In addition to the quantum selection problem of going from probability to perception, there is also the problem of subjectivity, sometimes called qualia or consciousness. The idea here is that sentient creatures, not just humans, have the special capacity for actualization from the probabilities and this ability could be connected to qualia.

We would like to point to an interesting possibility that is very close to Stapp’s language. Suppose the sentient creature, let’s simply refer to it as a human, is doing a face recognition task. On page 9 of Stapp’s new book “Quantum Theory and Free Will” is the following text: “The whole process resembles, as emphasized by Wheeler, the game of twenty questions in which a succession of Yes/No questions is posed, with each eliciting ‘Yes’, or a ‘No’ response. “ Then later on the same page he says: “This two-phased process allows our human conscious choices to enter causally into the evolution of the matter-based aspect of the world, rather than being helpless witnesses of a flow of events completely determined by the material aspects of nature alone.” He clarifies the subjective experience on p. 25 with: “A ‘No’ answer will result in a corresponding reduction, but no immediate experiential feedback. This omission leaves room for another query to be posed with no passage of physical time. Thus millions of ‘No’s’ can be produced by Nature with (little or) no passage of measured physical time”.

We queried Stapp about the word ‘millions’ and he said he should have used a smaller number...

While decoherence explains the transition from amplitudes to probabilities, it does not explain the transition from probability to perception. We do not yet deeply understand the probability to perception transition. For some, the answer that the transition is “random” seems sufficient, but others prefer to give a philosophical explanation. Some interpreters of quantum theory have supplemented the theory with a metaphysical property. For example, Henry Stapp suggests that a mind-like Nature performs the “selection,” and decides what outcome will be actualized to perception. Hence, it is important to distinguish between the realms of probability and perception, and not confuse them, since the realm of probability is fully within the theory of decoherence, while the realm of actualization to perception belongs to the philosophical foundations of the theory.

Of course it isn't at all clear decoherence is explaining or "explaining away", based on another article co-authored by Stapp:

Coming to Grips with the Implications of Quantum Mechanics

Stapp, Kastrup, Kafatos

Some claim that the modern notion of “decoherence” rules out consciousness as the agency of measurement. According to this claim, when a quantum system in a superposition state is probed, information about the overlapping possibilities in the superposition “leaks out” and becomes dispersed in the surrounding environment. This allegedly explains in a fairly mechanical manner why the superposition becomes indiscernible after measurement.

The problem, however, is that decoherence cannot explain how the state of the surrounding environment becomes definite to begin with, so it doesn’t solve the measurement problem or rule out the role of consciousness. Indeed, as Wojciech Zurek—one of the fathers of decoherence—admitted:

…an exhaustive answer to [the question of why we perceive a definite world] would undoubtedly have to involve a model of ‘consciousness,’ since what we are really asking concerns our [observers’] impression that ‘we are conscious’ of just one of the alternatives.

For more on what some of the other "quantum fathers" beyond Zurek considered regarding the role of consciousness in QM, see this thread.

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Addendum: Can't recall if I posted this old article from retired neuroscientist Raymond Tallis on Pscience Quest:

How Can I Possibly Be Free? Why the neuroscientific case against free will is wrong

Central to the defense of freedom against the challenges of determinism and the requirement for total self-determination will be to see how it is that we are, rather, self-developing — as when we consciously train the mechanisms of our own bodies to carry out our wishes even without conscious thought — so that we are able to make natural events pushed by natural causes the result of human actions led by human reasons.

We must start by characterizing the freedom that we are concerned with. First, if I am truly free, I am the origin of those events I deem to be my actions. Consequently, I am accountable for them: I have ownership of them; I own up to them. Second, they are expressive of me, in the sense that they cannot be separated from that which I feel myself to be. In this regard, they are connected with my motives, feelings, and expressed aims. My actions can be made sense of biographically.

But it is not enough that my actions originate with, and are expressive of, me. I would not be free if all my willing just brought about what was already inevitable. A truly free act is also one that deflects the course of events. So I am free if, as a result of many actions that are themselves free to deflect the course of events, and of which I am the origin, I have an important hand in shaping my life. This is what is meant by “being free.”

Note that this is another free will advocate who does not except souls, Survival, God, or Psi...

More on Chance vs Choice, from physicist Freeman Dyson:

“It is remarkable that mind enters into our awareness of nature on two separate levels. At the highest level, the level of human consciousness, our minds are somehow directly aware of the complicated flow of electrical and chemical patterns in our brains. At the lowest level, the level of single atoms and electrons, the mind of an observer is again involved in the description of events. Between lies the level of molecular biology, where mechanical models are adequate and mind appears to be irrelevant. But I, as a physicist, cannot help suspecting that there is a logical connection between the two ways in which mind appears in my universe. I cannot help thinking that our awareness of our own brains has something to do with the process which we call "observation" in atomic physics. That is to say, I think our consciousness is not just a passive epiphenomenon carried along by the chemical events in our brains, but is an active agent forcing the molecular complexes to make choices between one quantum state and another. In other words, mind is already inherent in every electron, and the processes of human consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice between quantum states which we call "chance" when they are made by electrons.”

I finished "Causation Is Not Your Enemy." It's a good and clear paper about causes not necessitating events. Nothing particularly enlightening, since I'm not sure why anyone would think that events in the real world have only one cause. He did not address the question of whether an ensemble of causes can necessitate an event, though I think he would say no.

The author did not address the question of how a free decision might be made. In particular, in all his examples about causation, he never offered one concerning causes and effect in our thinking/deliberation. It seemed as if he was treating thinking as a special case, but I'd have to ask him to be sure.

And he honestly stated that the absence of necessitation is not sufficient for free will.

~~ Paul

The author did not address the question of how a free decision might be made. In particular, in all his examples about causation, he never offered one concerning causes and effect in our thinking/deliberation. It seemed as if he was treating thinking as a special case, but I'd have to ask him to be sure.

Well that particular paper is about how causes don't necessitate their effects, and that this dispositional causation allows for a space between hard necessity and pure chance. It's not a paper with its own proof/explanation of free will.

That's why it's not the last paper.

(I'm sure they've gone into free will more deeply in their books, but I've not read them save for sections of their Introduction to Causation one.)

And he honestly stated that the absence of necessitation is not sufficient for free will.

Well they are naturalists trying to solve a problem of their own making in trying to fit free will into something close to Materialism. But as the above Stapp and Dyson (two physicists) quotes show, it's more reasonable to have consciousness in place of Pure Chance.

I guess if one needs a formal philosophical argument, and this requires the acceptance of Pure Chance, one may need to write more words than Stapp or Dyson on the matter to satisfy their peers.