Free will re-redux

Well obviously not sure since I don't know what you mean...I mean if you can quote someone who has a comparable stance it would possibly help, or even multiple people who might've said it in different ways.

I'll look around. My guess is that I won't find anything, which is why I remain skeptical. I'm not sure how a compelling argument for free will can be formed without some explanation of how the decision arises from the presumably indeterministic sources of decision-making.

there are mental precursors => a decision is required => poof! => a decision is reached


~~ Paul

I'll look around. My guess is that I won't find anything, which is why I remain skeptical. I'm not sure how a compelling argument for free will can be formed without some explanation of how the decision arises from the presumably indeterministic sources of decision-making.

there are mental precursors => a decision is required => poof! => a decision is reached


~~ Paul

I meant someone who has the same problems with free will as you, not arguments for free will.

A paper like this one might be interesting:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.100...016-1143-8

I'll start with this:

https://wmpeople.wm.edu/asset/index/lwek...mysterypdf

Also interesting:

https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcont...xt=pursuit


~~ Paul

Started reading them, except for the one it seems you have to pay $35 for.

My initial thoughts before trying to understand the "how" question, though I'll have to do a deeper reading ->

- I think we can dismiss event-causal libertarianism for the same reason we can dismiss compatibilism, trying to reconcile free will with randomness makes as little sense as claiming it can be reconciled with determinism. Unless I'm misunderstanding what "event-causal libertarianism" means?

- People use the term "determinism" without being clear as to who or what is doing the determining. It recalls Hume's criticism/skepticism, that causation is just observed temporal correlations without any actual constraints:

A => *poof!* => B, where A and B are sets of one or more elements depending on how we define the cause. No reason it couldn't ultimately have been some other set of outcomes C (even just slightly) distinct from B.

And while this is bad when discussing the circularity of "force" that Feynman noted, it seems even worse for the varied qualitative contents within a conscious person. How does one even assign a proper force vector to desire to eat chocolate vs desire to lose weight[?] Clearly it must be different than the way we think of forces in physics, as otherwise wouldn't the summing of [mental] forces ensure we never deliberate/agonize over a choice?

Anyway, as I said not anything directly related to the "how" stuff, just some reflections I thought might be of interest to others...

- People use the term "determinism" without being clear as to who or what is doing the determining. It recalls Hume's criticism/skepticism, that causation is just observed temporal correlations without any actual constraints:

A => *poof!* => B, where A and B are sets of one or more elements depending on how we define the cause. No reason it couldn't ultimately have been some other set of outcomes C (even just slightly) distinct from B.

I don't care "who" or "what" is doing the determining or indetermining. What I'm looking for is the process, the procedure, the steps taken to make the decision. Yes, it could have been another outcome. So why/how was it this outcome? How is the actual outcome arrived at?

I grant you that we do not know the ultimate how for a deterministic/random process. But we can point to computers for the deterministic part and we can point to true random number generators for the random part. And then we can give amazing details about how those processes work, all the way down to the bottom. Then, yes, we are stuck for an ultimate how.

If I could get just the tiniest bit of equivalent information for the making of an indeterministic decision, I would be happy.

~~ Paul

I don't care "who" or "what" is doing the determining or indetermining. What I'm looking for is the process, the procedure, the steps taken to make the decision. Yes, it could have been another outcome. So why/how was it this outcome? How is the actual outcome arrived at?

I grant you that we do not know the ultimate how for a deterministic/random process. But we can point to computers for the deterministic part and we can point to true random number generators for the random part. And then we can give amazing details about how those processes work, all the way down to the bottom. Then, yes, we are stuck for an ultimate how.

If I could get just the tiniest bit of equivalent information for the making of an indeterministic decision, I would be happy.

~~ Paul

Well I said in that post it wasn't concerning your "how" question, which after reading the papers I still don't understand. Perhaps there's something in them you can quote as paralleling your question?

Regarding computers and RNGs that's the wrong level of explanation, as I've said earlier in the thread -> Computers are using predictable causal relations that already exist, same with RNGs using stochastic patterns. These devices work without examining causality, they'd be the same if this is all a dream in God's mind, we're in a simulation, etc.

The level of explanation for computers and random number generators would be at the level of physics, which as Marcus Arvan notes under-explains causality ->

Rosenberg's book painted the first picture of reality to me that made dualism seem more plausible than physicalism. This was in large part because -- and here's the real thing that gripped me about his book -- Rosenberg shows (pretty convincingly in my view) that it is not just consciousness that science has trouble accounting for; science cannot account for causation either. And it can't account for it for the same simple reason: science deals with structure, whereas consciousness and causation -- properly understood -- both seem utterly simple and intrinsic. (note: it was really the second half of Rosenberg's book -- the part on causation, not the first part (on consciousness) -- that "got" me)

Indeed, Rosenberg got me to fundamentally "see the world in a different way" -- a way in which the idea of there being intrinsic qualities (such as primitive consciousness and causation) just have to be a part of any remotely plausible metaphysical picture of reality. For here, essentially, is what the book got me to see. First, every substance or property (note: I think there is no coherent distinction between substances and properties) we would ordinarily call physical -- mass, charge, the weak and strong nuclear forces, books, motorcyles, whatever -- are all fundamentally relational, or structural, in nature. An electron just is defined in terms of a particular function. So is mass. So is charge. Etc. But -- and this is the second thing that Rosenberg's book got me to see -- you can't have relations without relata. There have to be intrinsic properties "behind" the relations we observe (as physical things) for there to be those relations in the first place.

But free will is the establishment of a new effect for some prior set of causes, as a twist on Sartre's "Freedom is what you do with what is done to you". A conscious agent selecting possibilities is choosing what effect comes from the preceding causes that brought about a situation where a decision needs to be made.

Why I said the most comparable thing to free will would be at the level of quantum indeterminism, namely having a set of possible outcomes of which one is selected.

It's an "ultimate how" problem, at least insofar as Causation and Consciousness are problems of that level.

Really IMO there's little point in arguing over free will without first discussing causation...I should say consciousness as well but I think this forum and the past ones have discussed consciousness a lot...

I think when people argue about free will they are really arguing over the nature of what Arvan calls intrinsic properties. Which is why I mentioned some books that do discuss Causation and Consciousness in this thread. I can add another which is free, the new one by Henry Stapp ->

On The Nature of Things: Human Presence in the World of Atoms

There are domains of computational irreducibility... and that is where we are. Or you could say we are inside Laplace's demon's computer (which is the universe) that is calculating the future. The future can't be predicted except to run the simulation and see what happens. You can locally simplify into domains of computational reducibility (physics and engineering) which allow you to make probabilistic predictions. If you haven't already, please listen to this Lex Fridman podcast with Stephen Wolfram... one of the best yet!

We can't predict individual particle behavior in that fluid simulation I showed without running the simulation just like we can't predict individual particle behavior of quantum particles without "running the simulation" which is life.

In my "Patternism" model all randomness is fundamentally a result of subjective choice which by definition is the "first cause" the act of determining and if such choice were predictable it would be defined as part of the fundamental Object. We all contain "first cause" because the divine mind hasn't made up its mind yet and it doesn't know how to make up its mind until it sees what happens... nested feedback loops and we are each tracing out one such feedback loop out of all the possible loops that can exist.

Might be of interest, a bridge between computers and indeterminism ->

The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine

In honor of Alan Turing’s hundredth birthday, I unwisely set out some thoughts about one ofTuring’s obsessions throughout his life, the question of physics and free will. I focus relatively narrowly on a notion that I call “Knightian freedom”: a certain kind of in-principle physical un-predictability that goes beyond probabilistic unpredictability. Other, more metaphysical aspects of free will I regard as possibly outside the scope of science.I examine a viewpoint, suggested independently by Carl Hoefer, Cristi Stoica, and even Turing himself, that tries to find scope for “freedom” in the universe’s boundary conditions rather than in the dynamical laws. Taking this viewpoint seriously leads to many interesting conceptual problems. I investigate how far one can go toward solving those problems, and along the way, encounter (among other things) the No-Cloning Theorem, the measurement problem, decoherence, chaos, the arrow of time, the holographic principle, Newcomb’s paradox,Boltzmann brains, algorithmic information theory, and the Common Prior Assumption. I also compare the viewpoint explored here to the more radical speculations of Roger Penrose.The result of all this is an unusual perspective on time, quantum mechanics, and causation,of which I myself remain skeptical, but which has several appealing features. Among other things, it suggests interesting empirical questions in neuroscience, physics, and cosmology; and takes a millennia-old philosophical debate into some underexplored territory.

Aaronson notes it is part of a solution rather than an actual solution, but has some interesting conjectures related to some of the things you've talked about.

Might be of interest, a bridge between computers and indeterminism ->

The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine


Aaronson notes it is part of a solution rather than an actual solution, but has some interesting conjectures related to some of the things you've talked about.

Thanks for the links and your in depth discussion! I have read your responses but haven't had time to write a reply, but will do so when I can.

Thanks for the links and your in depth discussion! I have read your responses but haven't had time to write a reply, but will do so when I can.

No worries, it's just riffing and the solution is probably false as per Aaronson himself.

I feel as though where Aaronson goes wrong is though he seems to recognize the possibility of Consciousness being irreducible he doesn't see Causation is intrinsic as well.

That these seem to be the only two identifiable intrinsic properties (we can call them Will & Pattern...maybe ) is the a priori reason to think free will could exist in at least one possible world. Especially if one rejects Chance as in something happening for ultimately no reason at all ->

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.