Free will re-redux

This is the bottom line to Paul's personal conundrum.

He is demanding an explanation of how a free decision might be made while limiting the explanation to terms he has defined and is willing to accept.  His constraints limit us to providing the explanation either in terms of causal or random; nothing more.

As I've been saying since the start, his question and associated terms for any response is incoherent.  There is no ability to provide an answer, today.  Maybe tomorrow or maybe in 100 years, but not today.

As I have said countless times, you may provide an explanation in any terms you like. If I don't understand a term, I will say so. If you're going to stick with this excuse in spite of my saying that I am not limiting the explanation, then you're just stonewalling.

~~ Paul

So Patternism is a kind of Idealism?

I guess the issue I see is if Pattern means Structure, then doesn't it seem like there needs to be more than Structure?

As Stephen Hawking once said:


Or is Pattern what brings the Everything-at-Once chaos of the Abyss into recognizable form and entities? In the sense that causality is a kind of constraint, an ordering of possibilities becoming actualities?

Patternism grants equal essential importance to subject and object. Idealism emphasizes subject and Materialism emphasizes object.

Structure is pattern but structure implies stasis and pattern is inherently dynamic. (Because there are no boundaries without purpose, no purpose without goals, no goals if all goals are instantly attained, therefore inherent frustration (emotional voltage or desire) drives motion towards attainment of goals which creates pattern.)

Patternism grants equal essential importance to subject and object. Idealism emphasizes subject and Materialism emphasizes object.

Structure is pattern but structure implies stasis and pattern is inherently dynamic. (Because there are no boundaries without purpose, no purpose without goals, no goals if all goals are instantly attained, therefore inherent frustration (emotional voltage or desire) drives motion towards attainment of goals which creates pattern.)

I guess when I hear the word "pattern", it makes me think of a substance assuming patterns.

But you're saying there is no "stuff" assuming patterns, that patterns are just out there...does this mean they are relations without relata?

As I have said countless times, you may provide an explanation in any terms you like. If I don't understand a term, I will say so. If you're going to stick with this excuse in spite of my saying that I am not limiting the explanation, then you're just stonewalling.

~~ Paul

Hmmmmm...I don't think anyone is deliberately stonewalling, rather it isn't clear to us what you want. Repeating myself but hey this conversation has been replicated at least 4 times [between here and Skeptiko] with no one reaching agreement so ->

You had given the example of explaining how a computer works, but that doesn't make sense as a proper level of explanation because a computer is assembled from known, and at least stochastically repeatable for quantum computers, cause-effect relations. Free will is the making of new cause-effect relations, with the conscious agent selecting the effects for incoming causes.

You had mentioned following a recipe or using some game of chance, but to actually apply any of that to a real life decision is to just decide which of the many if not infinite ways of placing the decision in the hands of some "algorithm" which may or may not randomized elements. The result then is really just the aftermath of the decision [to pass off that original decision in question to whatever result comes out].

The question of a conscious agent selecting one among myriad possibilities [or more specifically the effect of some incoming cause that evokes a decision to be made] would be more akin to superposition than any of those process types.

This is the bottom line to Paul's personal conundrum.

He is demanding an explanation of how a free decision might be made while limiting the explanation to terms he has defined and is willing to accept.  His constraints limit us to providing the explanation either in terms of causal or random; nothing more.

As I've been saying since the start, his question and associated terms for any response is incoherent.  There is no ability to provide an answer, today.  Maybe tomorrow or maybe in 100 years, but not today.

I'm curious - is there a sketch of what such an explanation might look like?

And as an aside, do you think the following description of 4%** of photons reflecting back rather than passing through a window is deterministic, random, or something else altogether ->

In other words one out of every 25 photons will be reflected on average, and this holds true even for a "one at a time" flux. The four percent cannot be explained by statistical differences of the photons (they are identical) nor by random variations in the glass. Something is "telling" every 25th photon on average that it should be reflected back instead of being transmitted. Other quantum experiments lead to similar paradoxes...

...But what makes some of the photons reflect at all? What is it that is different for those "reflected four" photons than for the others? The answer is: no difference whatsoever.

The experiment can be done in such a way that a photon is long gone before the next one comes along, so the photons are not conveying information to each other in any understandable sense. And all the photons can be made to hit precisely the same spot on the glass, so it is not a matter of some photons having a different impact point than others. So what tells any given photon that it has the honor of being one of the "reflected four?"
 -Bernard Haisch, Is the Universe a Vast, Consciousness Created Virtual Reality Simulation?

**I'd been misremembering and saying 25% earlier, apologies!

I'm not sure what you mean. Why does "intelligent writing" require free will?

~~ Paul

Depends on how one defines "intelligent"  but I was actually aiming at your total absence of an explanation for not being convinced.

I can conceive of randomness because an event without causes is arbitrary.

Can you elaborate on this line of thinking? I mean even for the stochastic distribution of 1:25 photons passing through a window or reflecting back there is a context of causes - the light source & the window being of prime imprtance.

One way of thinking about this would be causes are dispositional.

A Powerful Theory of Causation

S. Mumford & R Anjum

Understanding irreducibly probabilistically constrained causation is not easy unless one accepts that it involves a dispositional connection that is neither entirely necessary nor entirely contingent. Our coin tends towards a 50:50 distribution, but in a sequence of trials there could be any distribution of heads and tails. We know that an actual 50:50 distribution is unlikely, especially when the number of trails is low. But we also know that if the number of trials is high then a distribution wildly at odds with an equal distribution is highly unlikely. There is a principle of probabilistic distribution that, applied to this case,says that the proportion of heads and tails will tend to 50:50 as the number of tosses tends to infinity; or, the higher the number of tosses then the closer to 50:50 the distribution is likely to be. This principle is appealing and yet we might wonder why it is true. Is it just some brute fact about the world or does it have a truthmaker? The powers theory offers a truthmaker for the principle. The coin has a tendency to land heads and tails with equal chance, a tendency which manifests itself over a sequence of trails. But this is only a disposition towards such a distribution. It does not necessitate it, as we know when we acknowledge that any actual distribution is possible for any sequence of tosses. Yet the distribution is not entirely contingent either, as we know when we acknowledge that distributions at variance widely from 50:50 are unlikely, proportionate to the number of trails.

The case of probabilistically constrained causation thus corroborates our account. It is noteworthy in so far as the account seems to accord entirely with what we already accept pre-theoretically to be the data of chancy causes.

You had given the example of explaining how a computer works, but that doesn't make sense as a proper level of explanation because a computer is assembled from known, and at least stochastically repeatable for quantum computers, cause-effect relations. Free will is the making of new cause-effect relations, with the conscious agent selecting the effects for incoming causes.

You had mentioned following a recipe or using some game of chance, but to actually apply any of that to a real life decision is to just decide which of the many if not infinite ways of placing the decision in the hands of some "algorithm" which may or may not randomized elements. The result then is really just the aftermath of the decision [to pass off that original decision in question to whatever result comes out].

The question of a conscious agent selecting one among myriad possibilities [or more specifically the effect of some incoming cause that evokes a decision to be made] would be more akin to superposition than any of those process types.

When I explain how a computer works, I can invoke deep physics to explain the causes and effects. I may not be able to explain why it doesn't work some other way, but I'm happy with a just-so excuse at the lowest level. Any explanation has just-so requirements at the bottom, since there cannot be an infinite regress of reasons.

If you need to use superposition (not sure what you mean by that term), then be my guest. Is there a superposition of choices that eventually collapse? The collapse can't be random, or we're not getting anywhere toward free will. How does it collapse?

~~ Paul

Can you elaborate on this line of thinking? I mean even for the stochastic distribution of 1:25 photons passing through a window or reflecting back there is a context of causes - the light source & the window being of prime imprtance.

One way of thinking about this would be causes are dispositional.

A Powerful Theory of Causation

S. Mumford & R Anjum

There is a context of causes for the overall effect, but apparently no cause for which photons are the ones that reflect. Just as there is no cause for a particular alpha particle decay event. Or at least no causes we have discovered.

I could play with the idea that these events really aren't entirely random. But they appear to be random and we cannot devise a way to predict which photons reflect or which particle alpha decays next. So there would remain the project to understand how the not-actually-random "mechanism" selects the photons to reflect and particles to decay. I don't envision that project being any easier than the free will project.

So, again, I'm happy to assume that there is some selection method other than billiard ball determinism and true randomness. But I'm no closer to imagining how it might work.

~~ Paul

When I explain how a computer works, I can invoke deep physics to explain the causes and effects. I may not be able to explain why it doesn't work some other way, but I'm happy with a just-so excuse at the lowest level. Any explanation has just-so requirements at the bottom, since there cannot be an infinite regress of reasons.

If you need to use superposition (not sure what you mean by that term), then be my guest. Is there a superposition of choices that eventually collapse? The collapse can't be random, or we're not getting anywhere toward free will. How does it collapse?

Well I've already said my only interest is challenging the idea that free will is incoherent or talking about causation, rather than making an affirmative argument.

My point was just that the how of "how a computer works" and the how of "how superposition works" are different kinds of explanation. 

So it's not that superposition explains free will, just that it does seem the to be closest observable phenomenon to the idea of a range of possibilities among which a conscious agent selects.

For myself I'm more interested in the idea of randomness ->

There is a context of causes for the overall effect, but apparently no cause for which photons are the ones that reflect. Just as there is no cause for a particular alpha particle decay event. Or at least no causes we have discovered.

I could play with the idea that these events really aren't entirely random. But they appear to be random and we cannot devise a way to predict which photons reflect or which particle alpha decays next.

I guess it is hard for me to see how something like the 4 reflected photons is truly random. Same thing with the particle decay constants. The very fact we can provide these probabilities is an indication of there being some underlying order. If it was truly random we wouldn't have any stochastic modeling.


I will say the 1:25 expectation for photon reflection is exceedingly odd as the photons aren't as-far-as-we-know sharing any information with each other.