Free will re-redux

My best guess is that Paul's looking for a description something like this:

The mind's doohickey interfaces with its whatsit, while its gizmo dynamically generates a list of options to funnel through the thingummy for refinement, and as the dialogue between doohickey and whatsit over the gizmo-supplied, thingummy-refined list of options reaches a critical juncture, one in particular emerges victorious, and the decision is finalised and propagates fully through the mind.

Nah, too much jargon. What I'm looking for is a short description of making a decision that doesn't sound like it's just deterministic and/or coin flips, but something more than "I made the decision freely."



Perhaps you could refine just the "one in particular emerges victorious" step.




~~ Paul

[Laird]

What I'm looking for is a short description of making a decision that doesn't sound like it's just deterministic and/or coin flips, but something more than "I made the decision freely."

Basically, you don't want a mechanistic explanation but you won't accept an holistic one either. I've already explained why I think this is. *Shrug*. "You can lead a horse to water" etc.

Perhaps its something like this:

Free decisions fall into one of two categories of consciousness processes: primary and secondary.

Primary decisions are the result of active thought.  The human (to narrow this down; I'll use "agent" going forward) uses various capabilities to weigh an action including things such as logic, emotion, environment, experience, genetics, culture, etc.  Each agent's ultimate decision in the same/similar circumstance is reached through a "process" unique to the agent.  Thus, its impossible to fully predict how any particular agent will choose or make its decision.  Probabilities can be predictive, but not fully so.

Secondary decisions are those we often refer to as more "subconscious".  These feel less active or not active at all to the agent, but can be affected by the agent's prior active decisions (think of building behavior).  To some degree you can think of these decisions as being a bit like a subroutine in programming.  The main program focuses on the macro, trusting the subroutines its written (influenced) to handle certain micro decision making.

So while there appear to be predictive, rules-based (i.e., deterministic) aspects to free decisions, at the core is a conscious agent who has said agency and the ultimately unpredictable ability to select its actions (decisions).  How this intractable ghost in the machine (i.e., consciousness as we know it) governs itself may not be mechanistic, process oriented, or rules-based.  We simply don't have the knowledge currently to say one way or the other.  Again, this may render the request ("a short description of making a decision") an incoherent question.  Who knows?  But to challenge the notion of a free decision based on our present inability to "describe" an associated process in a language so limited by our present knowledge seems illogical.

mechanistic, process oriented, or rules-based. 

But none of these explanations are causal at the level of a conscious agent selecting one out of a set of possibilities.

A single decision is equivalent to the very first step of any of these, where a single event causes the subsequent part of the process/mechanism.

But why does the cause produce that particular effect, when so many other things could've possibly happened? At least from within the causal process I can experience myself selecting possibilities, for supposed non-conscious processes there's little (nothing?) at all to go on just a mystery as to why when something happens all other possibilities don't happen.

So making a decision is closest to a single indeterministic event such as single superposition or a single reflection of a photon off clear glass. And give all those events can be modeled stochastically it's pretty clear they are neither determined (the same thing happens every time) nor random (there is no pattern at all).

But with half-lives it's even clearer [that there are non-random/non-determined events], since different materials have different steady half-lives even though each instance of particle emission is not predictable.

Basically, you don't want a mechanistic explanation but you won't accept an holistic one either. I've already explained why I think this is. *Shrug*. "You can lead a horse to water" etc.

I guess holistic ones don't do much for me. They just seem like 37 different ways to say that I make a decision freely, along with a minor insult about how I have no imagination.

". . . imagining the possibility of coherent, top-down conscious agency."

What does such a statement do for me? I'm happy to hear a top-down, bottom-up, or sideways-in description. Can you give me a hint about how top-down agency helps with the problem?

~~ Paul

Perhaps its something like this:

Free decisions fall into one of two categories of consciousness processes: primary and secondary.

Primary decisions are the result of active thought.  The human (to narrow this down; I'll use "agent" going forward) uses various capabilities to weigh an action including things such as logic, emotion, environment, experience, genetics, culture, etc.  Each agent's ultimate decision in the same/similar circumstance is reached through a "process" unique to the agent.  Thus, its impossible to fully predict how any particular agent will choose or make its decision.  Probabilities can be predictive, but not fully so.

This is exactly how I would describe a non-free decision, too.

Secondary decisions are those we often refer to as more "subconscious".  These feel less active or not active at all to the agent, but can be affected by the agent's prior active decisions (think of building behavior).  To some degree you can think of these decisions as being a bit like a subroutine in programming.  The main program focuses on the macro, trusting the subroutines its written (influenced) to handle certain micro decision making.

So while there appear to be predictive, rules-based (i.e., deterministic) aspects to free decisions, at the core is a conscious agent who has said agency and the ultimately unpredictable ability to select its actions (decisions).  How this intractable ghost in the machine (i.e., consciousness as we know it) governs itself may not be mechanistic, process oriented, or rules-based.  We simply don't have the knowledge currently to say one way or the other.  Again, this may render the request ("a short description of making a decision") an incoherent question.  Who knows?  But to challenge the notion of a free decision based on our present inability to "describe" an associated process in a language so limited by our present knowledge seems illogical.

There is nothing that sounds free here. You're honest, pointing out that the project is pretty much promissory. I'm not sure why that makes it illogical to challenge the notion, just as it is not illogical to challenge the notion of consciousness under physicalism.



~~ Paul

But none of these explanations are causal at the level of a conscious agent selecting one out of a set of possibilities.

A single decision is equivalent to the very first step of any of these, where a single event causes the subsequent part of the process/mechanism.

But why does the cause produce that particular effect, when so many other things could've possibly happened? At least from within the causal process I can experience myself selecting possibilities, for supposed non-conscious processes there's little (nothing?) at all to go on just a mystery as to why when something happens all other possibilities don't happen.

So making a decision is closest to a single indeterministic event such as single superposition or a single reflection of a photon off clear glass. And give all those events can be modeled stochastically it's pretty clear they are neither determined (the same thing happens every time) nor random (there is no pattern at all).

But with half-lives it's even clearer [that there are non-random/non-determined events], since different materials have different steady half-lives even though each instance of particle emission is not predictable.

But I'm not sure what this does for you. I don't think a satisfactory model of free decisions would be that each decision is random, but there is a predictable pattern to large groups of similar decisions.

~~ Paul

But I'm not sure what this does for you. I don't think a satisfactory model of free decisions would be that each decision is random, but there is a predictable pattern to large groups of similar decisions.

~~ Paul

I don't believe in randomness. [And I think it's inconceivable for everyone.]

If this were true:

each decision is random

this wouldn't be the case:

but there is a predictable pattern to large groups of similar decisions.

At least from within the causal process I can experience myself selecting possibilities, for supposed non-conscious processes there's little (nothing?) at all to go on just a mystery as to why when something happens all other possibilities don't happen.

How would you know the difference between having the memory of having selected a possibility, and experiencing selecting a possibility?

[Laird]

I guess holistic ones don't do much for me. They just seem like 37 different ways to say that I make a decision freely

Yeah, so, you're quite happy to go with "Random events just happen - it simply can't be explained how they happen" and "The application of 'necessitating' (though at the same time purely descriptive and non-prescriptive - no matter the inconsistency!) physical laws just happens - it simply can't be explained how they're applied or how they necessitate the events within their remit", but "Free will choices as the outcomes of agents holistically and coherently exercising their top-down agency in the full context of their situation just happen - how they happen can't be explained beyond that" is JUST NOT GOOD ENOUGH for you. Right. There's a black hole in your position that sucks all reasonableness and consistency into it.

along with a minor insult

Aw. Dude, you made this thread all about you right from the start: all along it's been about what you're willing to accept and what you find conceivable. All along, you have been rejecting and implicitly claiming "Not good enough" to all of the extensive efforts that Sci and I have made to present to you a credible and plausible defence of (and even an accounting for - much more Sci's work than mine) free will. Apparently, though, the real insult is not your blanket rejection of our efforts, which you scarcely seem to even consider, preferring rapid, brief responses which often ignore our strongest points; it's the thoughtful attempt to understand why you inevitably reject everything that we offer you.

Can you give me a hint about how top-down agency helps with the problem?

It confers meaningful control to the agent, versus the two horns of the dichotomy you present, in which (1) necessitating causality is forced upon the agent, and thus is beyond the agent's control, and (2) supposedly "random" events occur to the agent, again, beyond its control, rather than being generated by the agent under the agent's control.