Free will re-redux

Yeah it's impossible to tell what Paul wants, at least for me.

I am at a loss to understand why you think my question is incomprehensible.

Can you outline how an indeterminstic nonrandom decision is made?

Which word(s) in there are inscrutable? If there is one, can we work to replace it with a scrutable word?

~~ Paul

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.

Tim remarked (and implied) that the human brain is a fragile organ that if it should not receive vital chemicals it dies within 10-20 seconds. Should we accept Tim's statement at face value? Do you find it surprising no one else asked him where found those numbers? And if those numbers he cited are in fact true? Is it possible Tim misremembered and confused loss of consciousness (within 10 -20 seconds) with brain death? Tim brought it up.

Can you outline how an indeterminstic nonrandom decision is made?

Perhaps the question itself is incoherent?

This may be the case simply because of our lack of understanding of reality.  You seem to be asking a question that forces a response in currently understood terms of science, logic, and human understanding.  As is often said, the universe is under no obligation to be understood by you (or anyone else for that matter).

Also, what would a satisfactory answer do for you?  What would it change?

I don't believe that my existence is either deterministic nor random.  I'm comfortable allowing that aspects of my consciousness may both be deterministic and random at times.  (Sure feels that way sometimes!)  That said, however, I don't feel that I'm an automaton nor a walking RNG.  Its all feeling and belief, which I get, but it also fits my first person experience.  That's really all I have to go on as it stands.

Perhaps the question itself is incoherent?

This may be the case simply because of our lack of understanding of reality.  You seem to be asking a question that forces a response in currently understood terms of science, logic, and human understanding.  As is often said, the universe is under no obligation to be understood by you (or anyone else for that matter).

Also, what would a satisfactory answer do for you?  What would it change?

I don't believe that my existence is either deterministic nor random.  I'm comfortable allowing that aspects of my consciousness may both be deterministic and random at times.  (Sure feels that way sometimes!)  That said, however, I don't feel that I'm an automaton nor a walking RNG.  Its all feeling and belief, which I get, but it also fits my first person experience.  That's really all I have to go on as it stands.

I don't see why the question is incoherent, though I certainly agree that it may be impossible to answer at this point. In which case I would tend to go with "doesn't exist," as you can see from my signature quote.

To be incoherent, I think there are two possibilities. First, there is no such thing as an indeterministic nonrandom event. Second, it makes no sense to ask how it works, because that implies a mechanism and there is no mechanism. I may differ from some folks here in inferring from the lack of mechanism that true free will is simply magic, and I'm not comfortable going with magic.

But it must be the case that some philosophers have tried to come up with a logical explanation of a true free will decision. Everything I've read has simply proposed a source of the free decision, not a procedure.

Please note: I am not implying by words such as "process" and "procedure" that it has to be algorithmic. I'm just using those words for lack of a better one.

~~ Paul

Tim remarked (and implied) that the human brain is a fragile organ that if it should not receive vital chemicals it dies within 10-20 seconds. Should we accept Tim's statement at face value? Do you find it surprising no one else asked him where found those numbers? And if those numbers he cited are in fact true? Is it possible Tim misremembered and confused loss of consciousness (within 10 -20 seconds) with brain death? Tim brought it up.

Steve.

How is it that you manage to consistently misunderstand the basics of this ? 

Firstly, I never said the brain dies (as in brain death) after 10-20 seconds (of cardiac arrest). After 10-20 seconds into cardiac arrest, the electrical activity thought to be responsible for the mind etc disappears. 

When the heart (pump) stops pumping, there's no blood flowing up into the brain. It's patently obvious it's going to stop working isn't it, because it's source of power has gone. Pull the plug out of your computer and see what happens. The screen will go blank and it's basically the same thing. (within reason)

Consciousness (being awake) is affected even faster...instantly. Your heart stops and you're gone (lights out) in an instant

Brain death is the irretrievable/permanent loss of brain function which may or may not be associated with cardiac arrest. Often it results from head injuries where parts of the brain have been damaged in whatever way or maybe after a stroke. It means that the person is not going to come back to consciousness, at least not in a way that we can see. The heart will still be beating, pumping blood up into the brain, but the brain reflexes will all be absent. 

Do you see the differences ? That's what's so perplexing about the whole phenomenon of near death experiences or more precisely actual death experiences (cardiac arrest is the first stage of death). People are reporting conscious experience from a period when there shouldn't be any. There shouldn't be anything other than complete memory loss, but there is. 

I know I'm wasting my time. You won't read this properly and you'll just come back and say the same things next month.

I don't see why the question is incoherent, though I certainly agree that it may be impossible to answer at this point. In which case I would tend to go with "doesn't exist," as you can see from my signature quote.

To be incoherent, I think there are two possibilities. First, there is no such thing as an indeterministic nonrandom event. Second, it makes no sense to ask how it works, because that implies a mechanism and there is no mechanism. I may differ from some folks here in inferring from the lack of mechanism that true free will is simply magic, and I'm not comfortable going with magic.

But it must be the case that some philosophers have tried to come up with a logical explanation of a true free will decision. Everything I've read has simply proposed a source of the free decision, not a procedure.

Please note: I am not implying by words such as "process" and "procedure" that it has to be algorithmic. I'm just using those words for lack of a better one.

~~ Paul

I meant to refer to something either a) as yet unknown or b) not "knowable" through our traditional scientific/logical means.  In other words, asking for a process or procedure (understanding you aren't limiting this to algorithms) may be incoherent if "b" is the case.  It may even apply to "a" if we ultimately evolve to accept knowledge in forms other than science, direct observation, logic, etc.

I agree with the result here being an appeal to "magic" (as I'm interpreting the use of magic here as referring to something that can't be explained through our traditional scientific/logical mindset).  Its wholly unsatisfactory and I'm not saying I believe it to be the case, but was simply offering that it might be the case.

Again, Occam's Razor would seem to tell us that we do have free will at some level or at some times.  After all that's how it "feels".  Conversely, we could all simply be falling prey to the illusion.  Seems rather intractable to me.

I'm also interested in how an answer in terms we could presently understand would do for you.  Would this change your worldview or otherwise solve a problem?

Paul,

You are the one saying that events cannot be [other than] random or determined. The person making a claim should provide some reasoning for why the claim is convincing.

Why are non-deterministic events automatically arbitrary.

Just explain to us why you think this is the case, as it seems your issue is not with free will but rather even matter moving in a way that is not determined but also not random.

I think if you do that we'll have at least an understanding of what you are arguing about. People have tried giving their examples [of how free will would work] going all the way back to Skeptiko if not Mind-Energy, that's how long this topic has been debated. And to be honest I don't [think] much of any progress has been made.

Tim remarked (and implied) that the human brain is a fragile organ that if it should not receive vital chemicals it dies within 10-20 seconds. Should we accept Tim's statement at face value? Do you find it surprising no one else asked him where found those numbers? And if those numbers he cited are in fact true? Is it possible Tim misremembered and confused loss of consciousness (within 10 -20 seconds) with brain death? Tim brought it up.

Pretty sure nobody questioned cause we're too busy focusing on the main topic. And Tim DID bring it up, which is why it's the better position to drop it back down so we can focus on what the thread's about.

I agree with the result here being an appeal to "magic" (as I'm interpreting the use of magic here as referring to something that can't be explained through our traditional scientific/logical mindset).  Its wholly unsatisfactory and I'm not saying I believe it to be the case, but was simply offering that it might be the case.

This "magic" you are talking about is the foundation of the atheistic/Physicalist worldview.

Magic versus metaphysics

Indeed, if any view is plausibly accused of being “magical” in the sense in question, it is atheism itself.  The reason is that it is very likely that an atheist has to hold that the operation of at least the fundamental laws that govern the universe is an “unintelligible brute fact”; as I have noted before, that was precisely the view taken by J. L. Mackie and Bertrand Russell.  The reason an atheist (arguably) has to hold this is that to allow that the world is not ultimately a brute fact -- that it is intelligible through and through -- seems to entail that there is some level of reality which is radically non-contingent or necessary in an absolute sense.  And that would in turn be to allow (so the traditional metaphysician will argue) that there is something which, as the Thomist would put it, is pure actuality and ipsum esse subsistens or “subsistent being itself” -- and thus something which has the divine attributes which inexorably flow from being pure actuality and ipsum esse subsistens.  Hence it would be to give up atheism.

But to operate in a way that is ultimately unintelligible in principle -- as the atheist arguably has to say the fundamental laws of nature do, insofar as he has to say that they are “just there” as a brute fact, something that could have been otherwise but happens to exist anyway, with no explanation -- just is to be “magical” in the objectionable sense.  In fact it is only on a theistic view of the world that the laws of nature are not “magical”; and the Mackie/Russell position is (as I argue in the post linked to above) ultimately incoherent for the same sorts of reason that magical thinking in general is incoherent.  As is so often the case, the loudmouth New Atheist turns out to be exactly what he claims to despise -- in this case, a believer in “magical powers.”

The stuff about pure actuality can possibly be ignored, I think the arguments for God being Pure Actuality have problems of their own. I think the rest of what Feser says in the essay largely stands though.