Free will re-redux

This is not true. "the brain stops functioning after about 10-20 seconds, as does the brain stem (apparently according to experts)" .  Fact check yourself.

Googling brings up all kinds of rubbish as well as facts. I suspect you are referring to a study of four patients who had critical irrecoverable head injuries. Brain activity was thought to be initially detected several minutes after heart stoppage in one patient. However, it was realised that it was just an artefact (like a false reading) and the authors withdrew it.

The study continues to circulate on the net and people like your good self google it, and get excited, even though I've tried to point it out to you before. Here it is, take a look for yourself, Steve.

Written on behalf of the study investigators Loretta Norton, Raechelle M. Gibson, Teneille Gofton, Carolyn Benson, Sonny Dhanani, Sam D. Shemie, Laura Hornby, Roxanne Ward, and G. Bryan Young

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The article, Electroencephalographic Recordings During Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Therapy Until 30 Minutes After Declaration of Death, from The Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences describes a case series of four patients that were part of a larger feasibility study that asked if it was possible to monitor circulatory and neurologic function in patients during the dying process (Dhanani et al, Critical Care Medicine, 2014). Feasibility studies are meant to determine whether or not a study can be done; they are meant to be starting points, and results cannot be interpreted as conclusive or definitive. All four participants that were part of this case series were critically and terminally ill and, after a thoughtful decision by the family and medical team, underwent withdrawal of life sustaining therapies to allow natural death to occur. These patients were all declared dead by standard clinical examination by their treating physicians, who were independent from the research team. Although deceased organ donation can occur when specific criteria are met and clinical death is declared in such circumstances, none of these patients were organ donors.
Importantly, using a modified type of electroencephalography (EEG) it was shown that brain activity stopped minutes before the heart stopped beating in 3 patients. In one patient, low-frequency, sporadic EEG activity occurred after the heart stopped beating. In the article, the authors state that because this activity occurred long after the loss of circulation, this activity is likely an artefact – that is, it cannot be interpreted or trusted as accurate. EEG monitoring in patients can be subject to false readings due to environmental conditions within the intensive care unit that are not related to the patient’s brain activity. The authors conclude that the recording is a false reading and cannot be assumed to indicate that the brain is still functioning.  Furthermore, the patient’s heart had stopped, there was no blood pressure, no breathing, no response to pain stimulus, and no pupil reaction. This fourth case highlighted the uncertainty about the use of this specific EEG method to monitor brain activity during the dying process. Future studies will need to monitor EEG activity with improved methods. The authors are currently carrying out a larger study with improved EEG monitoring techniques in order to further explore the pattern of loss of brain activity during the dying process.
This study did not and cannot draw conclusions about re-defining death or end-of-life. The authors are enthusiastic about the interest in media that this article has generated and look forward to sharing the results of their new study in the near future.

That, for me, is the crux of the matter (excuse pun).

I'm not up to the intellectual-philosophical back and forth and I had to look up the meaning of "pedetic" but "emergent orders" speaks to me. In my imagination, that requires some form of knowing, whether that comes from the material particles involved or some external, omniscient presence is unclear but my favoured conjecture would be that matter and motivation are indivisible: they are aspects of the same thing and it is only our limited perception that divides them into different entities. Of course, materialists will hold that only the particles exist but then observations such as this one quoted above need to be explained.

Oh I think Nail might be using a definition of pedetic that differs from most anyway.

But yeah I think if even a materialist rejects the idea of a random/deterministic exclusive dichotomy there's not much reason for those of us who aren't materialists to worry about it barring some really good proof being presented here.

And it seems he isn't the only one. Here's physicist George Ellis on this question:

From chaos to free will

Physics enabled what took place in your head and body, but didn’t determine it; your mental interpretation of the event did.

Learning and memory offer another example of how downward causal effect shapes the underlying physics

And perhaps more in line with Nail's conception of Pedesis is the physicist Lee Smolin's Principle of Precedence ->

Precedence and freedom in quantum physics

A new interpretation of quantum mechanics is proposed according to which precedence, freedom and novelty play central roles. This is basedon a modification of the postulates for quantum theory given by Masanes and Muller[4].

We argue that quantum mechanics is uniquely characterized as the probabilistic theory in which individual systems have maximal freedom in their responses to experiment, given reasonableaxioms for the behaviour of probabilities in a physical theory. Thus, to the extent thatquantum systems are free, in the sense of Conway and Kochen[1], there is a sense inwhich they are maximally free.We also propose that laws of quantum evolution arise from a principle of precedence according to which the outcome of a measurement on a quantum system is selected randomly from the ensemble of outcomes of previous instances of the same measurement on the same quantum system. This implies that dynamical laws for quantum systems can evolve as the universe evolves, because new precedents are generated by the formation of new entangled states.

The physicist Marko Vojinovic concludes his essay Farewell to determinism with:

Such a conclusion, in addition to being fascinating in itself, has a multitude of consequences. For one, it answers the question “Is the whole Universe just one big computer?” with a definite “no.” Also, it opens the door for the compatibility between the laws of physics on one side, and a whole plethora of concepts like free will, strong emergence, qualia, even religion — on the other. But these are all topics for some other articles.

So, again, someone else who doesn't think free will is incoherent.

Googling brings up all kinds of rubbish as well as facts. I suspect you are referring to a study of four patients who had critical irrecoverable head injuries. Brain activity was thought to be initially detected several minutes after heart stoppage in one patient. However, it was realised that it was just an artefact (like a false reading) and the authors withdrew it.

The study continues to circulate on the net and people like your good self google it, and get excited, even though I've tried to point it out to you before. Here it is, take a look for yourself, Steve.

Written on behalf of the study investigators Loretta Norton, Raechelle M. Gibson, Teneille Gofton, Carolyn Benson, Sonny Dhanani, Sam D. Shemie, Laura Hornby, Roxanne Ward, and G. Bryan Young

---

The article, Electroencephalographic Recordings During Withdrawal of Life-Sustaining Therapy Until 30 Minutes After Declaration of Death, from The Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences describes a case series of four patients that were part of a larger feasibility study that asked if it was possible to monitor circulatory and neurologic function in patients during the dying process (Dhanani et al, Critical Care Medicine, 2014). Feasibility studies are meant to determine whether or not a study can be done; they are meant to be starting points, and results cannot be interpreted as conclusive or definitive. All four participants that were part of this case series were critically and terminally ill and, after a thoughtful decision by the family and medical team, underwent withdrawal of life sustaining therapies to allow natural death to occur. These patients were all declared dead by standard clinical examination by their treating physicians, who were independent from the research team. Although deceased organ donation can occur when specific criteria are met and clinical death is declared in such circumstances, none of these patients were organ donors.
Importantly, using a modified type of electroencephalography (EEG) it was shown that brain activity stopped minutes before the heart stopped beating in 3 patients. In one patient, low-frequency, sporadic EEG activity occurred after the heart stopped beating. In the article, the authors state that because this activity occurred long after the loss of circulation, this activity is likely an artefact – that is, it cannot be interpreted or trusted as accurate. EEG monitoring in patients can be subject to false readings due to environmental conditions within the intensive care unit that are not related to the patient’s brain activity. The authors conclude that the recording is a false reading and cannot be assumed to indicate that the brain is still functioning.  Furthermore, the patient’s heart had stopped, there was no blood pressure, no breathing, no response to pain stimulus, and no pupil reaction. This fourth case highlighted the uncertainty about the use of this specific EEG method to monitor brain activity during the dying process. Future studies will need to monitor EEG activity with improved methods. The authors are currently carrying out a larger study with improved EEG monitoring techniques in order to further explore the pattern of loss of brain activity during the dying process.
This study did not and cannot draw conclusions about re-defining death or end-of-life. The authors are enthusiastic about the interest in media that this article has generated and look forward to sharing the results of their new study in the near future.

No Tim, I wasn't.

Googling brings up all kinds of rubbish as well as facts. 

No Tim, I wasn't.

If you're gonna have a productive discussion Steve you gotta be able to use more than 1 sentence snap backs. We're on a forum not a like live text chat, if you've got points lay them out.

Also, gonna politely ask that this doesnt turn into a big debunk back and forth about brain activity when we're just trying to talk about free will here.

Feel free to use my thread on skeptical talking points in regards to this side debate on brain activity that seems to be going on then 

I think we probably just have to wait for Paul to come back.

I honestly don't know if he's saying free will can't exist because Mind=Brain and Brain is grounded in Physics, or that free will just cannot exist full stop.

If it's the former it's a debate regarding evidence, if it's the latter it's a philosophical argument that needs a proof.

I think we probably just have to wait for Paul to come back.

I honestly don't know if he's saying free will can't exist because Mind=Brain and Brain is grounded in Physics, or that free will just cannot exist full stop.

If it's the former it's a debate regarding evidence, if it's the latter it's a philosophical argument that needs a proof.

That's one of the reasons I brought up combatibalism in my first message, to see if he stood there or if he was pure no free will.

Though, considering the first post, are we REALLY expecting something more than a "HA GOTCHA" before he just turns and walks off into the sunset while people repeat everything that's already been said before. I'm pretty sure this is just a thread of "You couldn't provide me with an option that convinces me last time so now I want you to do the exact same thing again while I continue to disagree with you" or just trying to rile up a frustrated response for Paul's ammusement, hence why I said 'Bait' at the beginning, is fishing for an argument.

Though the discussion between me and you on compatibilism was productive and interesting.

That's one of the reasons I brought up combatibalism in my first message, to see if he stood there or if he was pure no free will.

Though, considering the first post, are we REALLY expecting something more than a "HA GOTCHA" before he just turns and walks off into the sunset while people repeat everything that's already been said before. I'm pretty sure this is just a thread of "You couldn't provide me with an option that convinces me last time so now I want you to do the exact same thing again while I continue to disagree with you" or just trying to rile up a frustrated response for Paul's ammusement, hence why I said 'Bait' at the beginning, is fishing for an argument.

Though the discussion between me and you on compatibilism was productive and interesting.

Yeah after 75 pages of debate, and for myself at least still not understanding what Paul wants, I do think it's best if he provides us with his own argument about why free will is incoherent.