Free will re-redux

What is required is a coherent argument for why one shouldn't call stochastic processes "random." There isn't a shred of evidence that anything is going on behind the scenes of particle decay to cause the half-life. It's simply something we observe and build laws to describe. We call it a "characteristic constant."

If someone wants there to be causes behind half-lives so as to open a door for causes behind free decisions, they first must find evidence for the half-life cause.

~~ Paul

No, that's just a projection to call it "random" as it makes no sense to look at the consistent half-lives of different materials and presume that Nothing is making those calculable half-lives vary.

The cause of each individual act of decay is the nature/state of the material. Similarly each indeterministic event at the QM level that we can model by statistics is also a case of a prior state serving as cause.

There just isn't any randomness nor determinism in nature, AFAICTell those are philosophical abstractions a lot of philosophers (especially those of the physicalist faith) believe in. Given no one has a proof that everything must be determined or random, that projection can be safely ignored.

Why do you say that quantum indeterminism is not random, as the term is usually understood? Perhaps you mean that it is not uniformly stochastic? I don't see how a nonuniform stochastic process helps the free will argument. I suppose you could suggest that whatever "causes" the half-life of a particular type of particle, even though individual decays are random, could also "cause" a large number of my decisions to have an overall "half-life" pattern. But since that "cause" is not under my control, again, I don't see how it helps.

I agree there is no metaphysical objection to free will. My objection is that I have not yet heard a coherent description of how it works. I have heard various terms that suggest a source, but nothing that explains how the decision is made.

~~ Paul

Random would mean there is no pattern at all. As the materialist Thomas Nail notes:

Since random fluctuations from disorder to order are physically rare, the likelihood that anything like the sun or even our galaxy would just suddenly pop into existence would be unimaginably rare, and would likely fall apart immediately due to further random motion. It would even be statistically possible for a human brain to pop into existence just long enough to think and then disperse.

 -Nail, Thomas. Being and Motion

I think the list of papers I posted previously is a "how" explanation as it goes from the fundamental ground of causation to the metaphysics of causal powers and how free will is a type of power.

But honestly this "how" question still makes no sense to me. If Physicalism is conceivable despite no explanation for how you get consciousness from non-conscious matter (something even Sam Harris thinks is nonsensical), and the lack of how for randomness - where something happens for no reason at all - is conceivable...what is the criteria for conceivability?

How would anyone know when the criteria has been met?

Physicalism lacks a "how" of consciousness existing. Idealism, Panpsychism, Neutral Monism can also fit all the descriptions of science. Physicalism means that consciousness isn't one of the fundamentals but arises out of that which has no consciousness. I suppose one could call it Naturalism but really the metaphysics is defined by what is missing at the Ground (God / Mind / Spirit) than what is there.

You've asked us to take "determinism" and "randomness" on faith. [I get that you aren't currently discussing them as part of a dichotomy but I still don't see what makes those to ideas fundamental in a way that doesn't necessitate a "how" explanation.]

And I did give a description, it's the set of papers I listed.

Right, and because there is no consciousness "how" yet, many of you reject the proposition that physicalism allows for it. I'm simply doing the same thing for free will.

You do not have to take the dichotomy on faith, nor even that determinism and randomness make sense. But I don't see how that lets you out of some kind of description of how a free decision is made.

If you could summarize your thoughts on the description of free will from those papers, I would appreciate it. All I got from them were more names for the source of free will, not a description of how a free decision is made.

~~ Paul

[Laird]

Why would my argument be defeated simply by your coining a term?

It wouldn't be, but it is defeated by the demonstration that one of its premises - that the dichotomy it proposes is exclusive - is false.

How does that top-down agent make a free decision?

Alas! That poor, starving orphan! Won't somebody please feed him a meal?!

No, that's just a projection to call it "random" as it makes no sense to look at the consistent half-lives of different materials and presume that Nothing is making those calculable half-lives vary.

Half-lives vary for reasons having to do with the stability of the particle. If you want to call that a cause of the half-life, I suppose you can, but I don't think physicists treat it as a cause. They just assign an observed constant to each particle. But I am not a physicist.

The cause of each individual act of decay is the nature/state of the material. Similarly each indeterministic event at the QM level that we can model by statistics is also a case of a prior state serving as cause.

There is no cause of an individual decay. If you want to propose that there is some "nature" of the material involved, then you're proposing a new area of physics.

There just isn't any randomness nor determinism in nature, AFAICTell those are philosophical abstractions a lot of philosophers (especially those of the physicalist faith) believe in. Given no one has a proof that everything must be determined or random, that projection can be safely ignored.

And I have been ignoring it for months. I'm not sure how many times I have to say that. Consider it ignored. So now what happens when a free decision is made? You're opening up a hole for it to fit into, but that is not an explanation.

~~ Paul

[Laird]

How does a random event occur?

Random would mean there is no pattern at all. As the materialist Thomas Nail notes:

Since random fluctuations from disorder to order are physically rare, the likelihood that anything like the sun or even our galaxy would just suddenly pop into existence would be unimaginably rare, and would likely fall apart immediately due to further random motion. It would even be statistically possible for a human brain to pop into existence just long enough to think and then disperse.

 -Nail, Thomas. Being and Motion

You should say "uniformly random." I believe mathematicians and physicists use the term "random" to mean "not necessarily uniformly stochastic."

I think the list of papers I posted previously is a "how" explanation as it goes from the fundamental ground of causation to the metaphysics of causal powers and how free will is a type of power.

But honestly this "how" question still makes no sense to me. If Physicalism is conceivable despite no explanation for how you get consciousness from non-conscious matter (something even Sam Harris thinks is nonsensical), and the lack of how for randomness - where something happens for no reason at all - is conceivable...what is the criteria for conceivability?

How would anyone know when the criteria has been met?

When the other person says "Aha, I understand what you are saying." For me, there is nothing to put in the space between the last moment of indecision and the first moment of decision. No one has described anything that works for me. In fact, no one has described anything at all that I can see. People have invented new terms, but they seem to be names for the source of the free decision, not names for the "method" by which the decision is made.

I don't understand how the question makes no sense. What happens in that special moment just as the decision is made? How do I choose in a way that is something more than either completely dictated by the state of affairs at the moment of choice, and/or just a coin flip (uniformly random or otherwise)?

Is it possibly a weighted coin flip, where the weighting was determined by me prior to the flip?

~~ Paul

It wouldn't be, but it is defeated by the demonstration that one of its premises - that the dichotomy it proposes is exclusive - is false.

I haven't seen anything that proves the dichotomy is false, unless you take "random" to mean uniformly random. But even if I did, that doesn't help me with free will.

~~ Paul

How does a random event occur?

An event that occurs at a random time, or an event that occurs at a particular time but is random?

The first case: It just does.

The second case: Something may cause the event to occur, but not cause the particular outcome. The particular outcome just is.

But none of this is license to say "So, a free decision is just like that." Because if a free decision is just like that, then it is random. Unless, as I suggested above, we somehow freely chose the characteristic constants of the nonuniformly random decision. But that just pushes the problem down one level.

~~ Paul

(This brings up the question of whether a free decision need be made consciously.)

If you could summarize your thoughts on the description of free will from those papers, I would appreciate it. All I got from them were more names for the source of free will, not a description of how a free decision is made.

~~ Paul

You sure you read these papers? ->

The Theory of Causal Significance

Real Dispositions in the Physical World

Causal Constraint

A Powerful Theory of Causation

Causation is Not Your Enemy

Free Will and Mental Powers

I ask because it doesn't even seem like you watched this video from months ago ->