Free will re-redux

This still seems to be a bit 

"Give me a method"
"I can't we literally don't have the words for it"
"Not good enough give me a method"

I'm still banking on an emergent approach. I feel like free will needs to be disproved before it can be said to not exist. Still, can't we just take it or leave it at this point?

This still seems to be a bit 

"Give me a method"
"I can't we literally don't have the words for it"
"Not good enough give me a method"

I'm still banking on an emergent approach. I feel like free will needs to be disproved before it can be said to not exist. Still, can't we just take it or leave it at this point?

Early on in this thread I noted there's an irreducible aspect to free will, but there is a similar irreducible aspect to Determinism (why one thing always happens when so many other things could've happened) and Randomness (something happens for no reason at all).

The one bit of criteria I've gotten, that the "how" problem for the conscious free will agent extends to the "how" problem of Thomas Nail's argument that matter itself moves in non-determined/non-random ways....well that's been addressed by examining radio-active decay though I'll buttress that argument further.

But also, who said we didn't have the words for it? There's a reading list that already given a few times that offers a "how" approach in terms of Causal Powers ->

The Theory of Causal Significance

Real Dispositions in the Physical World

A Powerful Theory of Causation

Causation is Not Your Enemy

Free Will and Mental Powers

Though I guess I should add Steven Esser's Causal Constraint post to link the first essay with the rest. Probably between the first link and the second...

Anyway emergence is just a Something from Nothing proposition, though admittedly less problematic than Compatibilism which IMO is just a path toward self-deception. I doubt the public at large would buy something as oxymoronic as Compatibilism, whether in its usual Compatible w/ Determinism sense or the equally flawed Compatible w/ Randomness of the Physicalist "Libertarians".

I'm not looking for the criteria. I'm looking for a description of the way in which a free decision is made.

Well I look forward to the beer and shrimp in some post-COVID world but it's actually me who is looking for criteria.

After all, without the goal posts firmly placed how will I know when I've won the debate?

Well I look forward to the beer and shrimp in some post-COVID world but it's actually me who is looking for criteria.

After all, without the goal posts firmly placed how will I know when I've won the debate?

This still seems to be a bit 

"Give me a method"
"I can't we literally don't have the words for it"
"Not good enough give me a method"

I'm still banking on an emergent approach. I feel like free will needs to be disproved before it can be said to not exist. Still, can't we just take it or leave it at this point?

Wait, thing X needs to be disproved or we should assume it exists? Excellent. I've always just known there is an invisible pink hamster orbiting Neptune.

~~ Paul

Well I look forward to the beer and shrimp in some post-COVID world but it's actually me who is looking for criteria.

After all, without the goal posts firmly placed how will I know when I've won the debate?

But I bet you feel a whole lot better since Wednesday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to-RVV_3anw

~~ Paul

Wait, thing X needs to be disproved or we should assume it exists? Excellent. I've always just known there is an invisible pink hamster orbiting Neptune.

~~ Paul

Might work in the case of pink hamsters but doesn't much work in the case of free will. I'm pretty sure you and me assume free will exists, we act like it does, society is built like it does. I know that combatibalistic free will certainly hasn't been proved to not exist, so until it's proved to not exist then whoever says it doesn't can just put their foot in their mouth. Right now it could go either way, have to wait and see.

Neurobiologists believe the mind brain system is and must be classical physics. For many, at some complexity, consciousness arises. This could be correct but faces what I will call the Stalemate: Such a mind can at most witness the world but, due to the causal closure of classical physics, cannot act upon that world. Such a consciousness must be merely epiphenomenal.

Quantum biology is exploding, showing that quantum effects can and do arise at body temperature. Quantum mechanics allows a partially quantum mind to have ACAUSAL consequences for the “meat” of the brain, thus solving the Stalemate and answering the problem posed by Descartes’ Res cogitans and Res extensa: i.e. the Stalemate. Our human capacity to choose, in turn, demands that the present could have been different, thus the truth of counterfactual claims. If quantum measurement is indeterministic and real, quantum mechanics and measurement allow the present to be different.

I shall discuss these issues and the newly discovered Poised Realm, hovering reversibly between quantum and “classical” behaviors, as a new basis both for the mind body system and a new class of constructable and evolvable “computers” which are not algorithmic, Trans Turing.

Might work in the case of pink hamsters but doesn't much work in the case of free will. I'm pretty sure you and me assume free will exists, we act like it does, society is built like it does. I know that combatibalistic free will certainly hasn't been proved to not exist, so until it's proved to not exist then whoever says it doesn't can just put their foot in their mouth. Right now it could go either way, have to wait and see.

This depends on your definition of compatiblistic free will. If you're talking about the legal definition, then it exists by definition. Otherwise you'll have to explain what you mean.

~~ Paul

Neurobiologists believe the mind brain system is and must be classical physics. For many, at some complexity, consciousness arises. This could be correct but faces what I will call the Stalemate: Such a mind can at most witness the world but, due to the causal closure of classical physics, cannot act upon that world. Such a consciousness must be merely epiphenomenal.

Quantum biology is exploding, showing that quantum effects can and do arise at body temperature. Quantum mechanics allows a partially quantum mind to have ACAUSAL consequences for the “meat” of the brain, thus solving the Stalemate and answering the problem posed by Descartes’ Res cogitans and Res extensa: i.e. the Stalemate. Our human capacity to choose, in turn, demands that the present could have been different, thus the truth of counterfactual claims. If quantum measurement is indeterministic and real, quantum mechanics and measurement allow the present to be different.

I shall discuss these issues and the newly discovered Poised Realm, hovering reversibly between quantum and “classical” behaviors, as a new basis both for the mind body system and a new class of constructable and evolvable “computers” which are not algorithmic, Trans Turing.

Nevertheless, quantum theories of consciousness suffer from the same difficulties as neural or computational theories. Quantum phenomena have some remarkable functional properties, such as non-determinism and non-locality. It is natural to speculate that these properties may play some role in the explanation of cognitive functions, such as random choice and the integration of information, and this hypothesis cannot be ruled out a priori. But when it comes to the explanation of experience, quantum processes are in the same boat as any other. The question of why these processes should give rise to experience is entirely unanswered. ---David Chalmers