Free will re-redux

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....This to me is only natural as the question of free will is at the level of trying to understand/explain indeterminate quantum behavior. Free will should be argued for/against at the same level that the debate between Pedesis and Randomness occurs.

This is because just like Pedesis and Randomness the question of Free Will concerns possibility selection, specifically possibility selection by a conscious agent. Explanations of computers, quantum or otherwise, work at a "higher" level where the patterns of possibility selection are accepted and expected to hold across time.

One might even argue that Free Will is Conscious Pedesis, a non-determined mental event that is grounded via relations to the surrounded context of the decision maker.

Just to tie this back to something Typoz said that I think got glossed over:

If I may be forgiven for tossing in an aside, it seems we're back in the choice of A or B where there is no great difference between the two. What interests me much more is something else. I'm really most interested in change.

The "how" of "non-free decisions" consists of following a set of instructions, leaving the decision to some random event, or some combination of deterministic instruction following and games of chance.

But it becomes clear when applied to an actual meaningful decision that these algorithms are not explanations for how to make that decision. The reason is that in actual application one must decide between the many, if not infinite, variations of ways you could combine a set of instructions and games of chance.

So whether one is following a set of pre-written steps, leaving the decision up to a game of chance, or some combination the decision has already been made. Those steps and/or games of chance are awaiting the results of a process. At best they can be called the execution/follow-through of a decision on how to make the meaningful decision.

But the decision, at the point, has already been made.

Thus, again, the "how" of free will shouldn't be expected to look like the "how" of some set of instructions and/or games of chance anymore than the explanation of how a computer (regular or quantum) works.

I'm happy to consider that some of what appears to be random is actually not random. Nail can conceive matter moving any way he likes, but can he explain how the movement is caused by an indeterministic yet nonrandom agent?

Again, there is a lot of talk of the source of such effects, and a lot of repetition that there might be such effects, but not much at all in the way of description. If the description is even subtler than quantum mechanics, then I certainly agree that it's going to be a bitch of a project.

~~ Paul

See my last post, it's still not clear what you want since we haven't gotten any good explanations for how non-free decisions are made.

I don't really understand this - are you saying substances like a cheese sandwich are made of patterns, rather than expressing patterns? I feel like "stuff" can have patterns, but patterns cannot be expressed/actual without "stuff"?

Will respond to rest later, but really quick...

Yes, a cheese sandwich is fundamentally a pattern. "Stuff" is composed of patterns - not tiny rocks (materialism).

The idea that material is fundamental is a metaphysical extrapolation of the sensory experience of hard things.
The idea that ideas are fundamental is the metaphysical extrapolation of the sensory experience of soft fuzzy things.

Pattern unites both. It unites subject and object in one concept thereby dissolving hard problem. There is no pattern without subjective observer deciding where to lay down boundaries. There is no pattern without "objective" similarity and difference.

So if we say the fundamental reality is pattern we have subject, object, and choice baked right into reality.

See my last post, it's still not clear what you want since we haven't gotten any good explanations for how non-free decisions are made.

They are made algorithmically, like a computer, but perhaps with some arbitrary steps thrown in.

We have algorithms. We have truly arbitrary events. What else is there?

~~ Paul

You know how one of the bit's of data about NDEs is that they might happen less often from head injuries? Well I'm going to personally test that theory when I slam my head into the kitchen countertop from reading this conversation.

This entire conversation is just:
- Here's some examples of how things might happen non deterministic and non randomly
- Okay but how do those things happen
We don't KNOW how they happen because we're trying to measure everything with determinism and randomness. It's like asking what happens at the middle of a black hole, we can't give you a good answer because our rules don't work there.

If that's not good enough for you then that's fine, we're not trying to religiously convert you. But know that, other than just assuming determinism applies to everything at every level, there isn't actually any solid evidence to disprove every form of free will either. Compatibilism is still a fine option. I'm personally a compatibilist and it's a comfortable and majority spot among contempary academic philosophers. 

Now for some other, ACTUALLY interesting points about free will that haven't just been repeated a million times over. 

I wonder how something like PSI evidence would play into the discussion. Nonlocality or some kind of immeterial consciousness would definitely be a point in libertarianism's favour, alongside something like PK, but then things like feeling the future experiments would be something that might be an obstacle.

You know how one of the bit's of data about NDEs is that they might happen less often from head injuries? Well I'm going to personally test that theory when I slam my head into the kitchen countertop from reading this conversation.

 

This entire conversation is just:
- Here's some examples of how things might happen non deterministic and non randomly
- Okay but how do those things happen
We don't KNOW how they happen because we're trying to measure everything with determinism and randomness. It's like asking what happens at the middle of a black hole, we can't give you a good answer because our rules don't work there.

While I think you capture the futility of the conversation I don't think free will is any more mysterious than quantum randomness or the resolution of that randomness into macro-level predictable behaviors.

But like randomness, determinism, or pedesis we're talking about possibility selection (even if there's just one possibility as in determinism), save with conscious agents. So if free will exists it's a property/ability of conscious agents, and if it's truly free it's an irreducible property. Similarly even deterministic explanations - [which have to explain why other possibilities don't happen] - have to ultimately be either because of God or are a brute-fact of Nature.

If we have an explanation for why/how cause-effect relations occur across reality that's where we'd find an explanation for free will.

Though it wouldn't be an explanation like how a computer works, anymore than the explanation for why particles behave indeterministically in some instances and deterministically in others would be found at that level.

Compatibilism is still a fine option. I'm personally a compatibilist and it's a comfortable and majority spot among contempary academic philosophers.

Disagree, but we've already shared our differences on this.

Now for some other, ACTUALLY interesting points about free will that haven't just been repeated a million times over. 

I wonder how something like PSI evidence would play into the discussion. Nonlocality or some kind of immeterial consciousness would definitely be a point in libertarianism's favour, alongside something like PK, but then things like feeling the future experiments would be something that might be an obstacle.

Yeah I think if PK were demonstrable and not explicable by classical-level neurology most would accept that mind transcends causal chains of physics. If PK, or just consciousness, has to be explained at the quantum level not sure how people would read that. I suspect, like the physicist George Ellis, most would conclude free will over the idea that everything from the pyramids to Shakespeare's plays was just born from randomness.

Though I don't believe information moves from the future to the present, I actually think precognition stuff done by Bem if believed would be an argument for conscious agents having choices. After all if knowing the incoming future never changed the outcome why wasn't it selected against.

Will respond to rest later, but really quick...

Yes, a cheese sandwich is fundamentally a pattern. "Stuff" is composed of patterns - not tiny rocks (materialism).

The idea that material is fundamental is a metaphysical extrapolation of the sensory experience of hard things.
The idea that ideas are fundamental is the metaphysical extrapolation of the sensory experience of soft fuzzy things.

Pattern unites both. It unites subject and object in one concept thereby dissolving hard problem. There is no pattern without subjective observer deciding where to lay down boundaries. There is no pattern without "objective" similarity and difference.

So if we say the fundamental reality is pattern we have subject, object, and choice baked right into reality.

I don't want to reply too deeply until you've gotten the chance to respond to the post - though you can always change your mind [and decide what you've written] is all you want to say!

Anyway, still not sure about the whole pattern thing but it did remind me of this:

Experience and Causation

Steve Esser

I’m re-reading sections of Gregg Rosenberg’s A Place for Consciousness: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World. What’s brilliant about the work is that it starts with the Russellian insight about the mind-body dilemma (discussed here) and then “ups the ante” by linking consciousness to other metaphysical puzzles – including those of those of causation and the composition of objects.

Here’s a rough table listing a general feature of the world and the aspect of consciousness it matches up with.

Feature of Nature/Aspect of Consciousness
Intrinsic Properties/Qualitative Content (“Qualia”)
Causation/Experiential Flow
Properties bundled into Objects/Subjective Unity

The world is panpsychist in the sense that the aspects of consciousness are really ubiquitous features of nature as seen from our particular point of view.

Let me say a few words about causation:

With regard to Russell, in The Analysis of Matter he characterized the world as a network of causal events. He describes mental percepts as causal events we participate in, while physical theories are models of causal events we don’t necessarily participate in, but infer via their effects. His proposal of neutral monism is simply based on the fact that we don’t have a reason to think these categories of events are essentially different.

But while physics clearly seeks to describe the causal structure of the world, Russell doesn’t explicitly criticize physical theories for their lack of a full account of causality (unless I missed it, which is very possible). But it is pretty clear that while physics models the causal structure of the world, physics does not provide a theory of causation...

Physical theories as we have known them are compatible with several theories about causality, with philosophers debating their relative merits. Dynamic equations link states with points in time, but they don’t speak to how one state gives rise to the next....

[url=http://guidetoreality.blogspot.com/2010/12/experience-and-causation.html][/url]

You know how one of the bit's of data about NDEs is that they might happen less often from head injuries? Well I'm going to personally test that theory when I slam my head into the kitchen countertop from reading this conversation.

I appreciate the wittiness of this comment!

However, in the context of NDEs, it is important to distinguish between whether or not something happened on the one hand, and whether or not we are able to remember on the other. There is an established phenomenon called traumatic amnesia: memory loss resulting from a hard blow to the head. Though I'd add that there are examples of NDEs or OBEs in these circumstances, amnesia is not always the result.

Now back to the topic...

It is the Will which is a fundamental principle of nature, which we share if we so choose to define ourselves as sharing it.

I strongly agree.

Will can be programmed in simulation.  We already know a lot about it and it is open to research as an informational (non-material) activity.

I don't really get this either - Absolute Truth is like Matter + Energy + Laws of Physics?

Both the notion of absolute Truth and Materialism posit that objects are self-existent apart from any observer/perceiver - like tiny immutable rocks that we discover. Pretending the world is made of tiny rocks is useful in a certain domain of computational reducibility just like Newton's law of Gravity is useful in a domain of physics, but this is a simplification of the fundamental nature of reality.

Truth has usefulness baked into it and therefore it has purpose / goals / Will / subjectivity baked into it.

Does it relate to: Can't a purely deterministic universe be like a clock? Or do you mean that each step of the clock needs to be guaranteed by a Will of some kind?

A purely deterministic universe would be the block universe - like a roll of film - a static object. The clock ticking away is just motion relative to the object and not a change in the object itself.

We live in a universe where there is some non-zero probability that a tooth in a gear in the clock will break and the probability of that happening can be shaped by the field of consciousness which we can think of as a torus with poles pointing future and past.

I would agree with that much, though I'd say even a frozen immutable universe needs an explanation for why its possibilities remain constrained across the temporal sequence.

The causal chain is either a loop or infinite regress. I vote for loop. Or rather an infinite regression of nested loops (visualizing again the torus). To put it simply, the cause of causes is the Will which you will find within yourself.

I don't think pure randomness is actually possible, though I'd say a "chaos universe" could be one where animism is true but there's no Harmony between the spirits controlling varied domains.

Yes, and if there is no harmony between the spirits then there is no external structure and therefore there is no structured environment with which to shape the spirits' internal structures and therefore there is no structure anywhere.

Anyway this is really interesting stuff. Usually these discussions end up boring as the same things get said over and over and almost no one changes their minds...

These discussions force us to look into the Abyss which is where all great ideas come from.