Neuroscience and free will

That's an interesting framing. And I'm reminded here of the value of responding to posts rather than simply reading them: one is forced to read more carefully, for understanding, and otherwise-hidden gems like this become more discoverable.

So (what I think you're saying is that), whilst causation has an ontological reality, determinism does not; it is merely an epistemic construct? If "physical laws" are merely descriptive then that seems to follow: all we can do is try to best approximate the true descriptions, and our approximations could reasonably be described as "probability expectations".

I am interested though in exploring the other possibility: that "physical laws" are prescriptive, not descriptive (the view which Paul seems to be espousing, whether explicitly or implicitly). How might this be possible? What (if not "who") would be supplying the "enforcement" necessary for the prescription? Perhaps Paul has something to say about this.

Well I'm not convinced we are limited to approximations, though we may only be able to offer a few metaphysical options without being able to decide between them.

I suspect that, as you suggest to Paul as one of the extreme positions, that all causation is mental causation of some type. I think if one asks themselves what is involved when a brick hits a window, digging into the "how" of causality, the plausibility of this seemingly extreme claim can be shown.

[Laird]

I suspect that, as you suggest to Paul as one of the extreme positions, that all causation is mental causation of some type. I think if one asks themselves what is involved when a brick hits a window, digging into the "how" of causality, the plausibility of this seemingly extreme claim can be shown.

Intriguing, though understandable given your appreciation for Edward Feser's writing, of which I've read only a little based on links you've shared but which I quite like and which I think could be used to support your claim... am I heading in the right direction here?

Intriguing, though understandable given your appreciation for Edward Feser's writing, of which I've read only a little based on links you've shared but which I quite like and which I think could be used to support your claim... am I heading in the right direction here?

Yup, sort of...I think Feser's conception of a Prime Mover is one possibility, though the picture of God in Classical Theism seems quite a strange entity. And of course we need some explanation for why a Prime Mover is a conscious entity, which Feser does get into in Five Proofs of God.

OTOH I think there is also value in Gregg Rosenberg's Liberal Naturalism as described in his A Place for Consciousness: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World, and some excerpts of his book can be found here along with a summary/interview/discussion on this blog.

What I think both of these metaphysics get into is exploring what's missing in the "just so" picture of causation that materialism/physicalism seems to take for grant[ed].

Why I think it's best to ask what happens when a brick hits a window, as otherwise we'll all talk past each other making assumptions about what is involved with the base level of causation.

The current understanding is that most mutations are neutral. 

https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpag...ecular-839

Also, you cannot assume that mutations take long walks in sequence space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_s...ence_space

~~ Paul

On the rarity of functional versus impaired or nonfunctional protein versions in response to random mutations of a protein amino acid sequence: 

From this article:   

"....the Tokuriki and Tawfik study (paper at https://www.nature.com/articles/nature05385 (paywall)) demonstrated the following effects of accumulating mutations: 

After only a few random mutations (1-2) under weak selection, around a third of subsequent changes to a protein completely disable it.
After several more mutations accumulate (5-6), the protein is inactivated by slightly under two-thirds of subsequent changes. 
After random alteration of less than 10 percent of the protein’s initial sequence, it becomes permanently nonfunctional (fitness approaches zero). 
The corresponding rarity (ratio of functional to nonfunctional amino acid sequences) can be calculated working backwards. The number of sequences that differ from an optimal one by a given number of amino acids increases almost exponentially with the number of amino acids, so a random search would find a barely functional sequence long before an optimized one. Therefore, estimating the upper limit for the probability of a successful trial must focus on this neighborhood of sequence space (map of all possible sequences).   

In the study, after 5-10 mutations, roughly 2 in 3 mutations inactivate a protein. Therefore, 1 in 3 amino acids at each position on average would correspond to a functional sequence. The rarity (ratio of functional to nonfunctional amino acid sequences) would then be less than 1/3 to the power of the sequence length. This estimate closely matches the result from Axe’s 2004 ß-lactamase experiment that only 1 in 10^77 sequences corresponds to a functional fold/domain within the protein."

[Laird]

Why I think it's best to ask what happens when a brick hits a window, as otherwise we'll all talk past each other making assumptions about what is involved with the base level of causation.

Thanks for the links, haven't yet explored them, but just wanted to ask re the above: is this something you'd be comfortable "going first" at, or would you rather just leave the challenge set and wait for a contender to give it a go?

Thanks for the links, haven't yet explored them, but just wanted to ask re the above: is this something you'd be comfortable "going first" at, or would you rather just leave the challenge set and wait for contender to give it a go?

Well I think we need to ask:

What is it about the brick, and the window, that leads to the event of a shattered window?

Why doesn't the brick sometimes turn the window shards into butterflies?

That seems like a good start. It seems to me the window has certain potentials that can be actualized by the brick. The window is also receptive to the brick's active power. And the brick has the potential for flying through the air, but that also needs to be actualized...

And there is something enforcing constraints on both what the brick is capable of and what the window is capable of. Causation, as Rosenberg notes, is the question of why certain only effects follow from certain causes.

[Laird]

And there is something enforcing constraints on both what the brick is capable of and what the window is capable of.

This is interesting. I've assumed a descriptive interpretation of "laws" whilst leaving open the possibility of a prescriptive one, but is a purely descriptive interpretation adequate? If things can only be described and "just happen", and nothing is enforcing constraints, which (the enforcing of constraints) you rightly suggest seems to be necessary, then why are there any patterns at all? Why is it not all random? And what could enforce constraints other than a volitional conscious agent?

This is interesting. I've assumed a descriptive interpretation of "laws" whilst leaving open the possibility of a prescriptive one, but is a purely descriptive interpretation adequate? If things can only be described and "just happen", and nothing is enforcing constraints, which (the enforcing of constraints) you rightly suggest seems to be necessary, then why are there any patterns at all? Why is it not all random? And what could enforce constraints other than a volitional conscious agent?

This is pretty much where I'm currently at! As Bergson said, "Change is far more radical than we are at first inclined to suppose."

There is a philosopher, Quentin Meillassoux, who has noted this lack of constraint in matter itself, that a true materialism implies "hyper-chaos" which defies even probability distributions - this is randomness where anything could happen including everything behaving in an orderly fashion forever or every window suddenly becoming a flock of butterflies.

We could instead insist there are Laws, but this leads to more conundrums about these immaterial laws [& their relationship to the rest of the Real]:

"The conviction that laws somehow give us a full accounting of events seems often to be based on the idea that they govern the world's substance or matter from outside, "making" things happen. If this is the case, however, then we must provide some way for matter to recognize and then obey these external laws. But, plainly, whatever supports this capacity for recognition and obedience cannot itself be the mere obedience. Anything capable of obeying wholly external laws is not only its obedience but also its capability, and this capability remains unexplained by the laws.

If, with so many scientists today, we construe laws as rules, we can put the matter this way: much more than rule-following is required of anything able to follow rules; conversely, no set of rules can by themselves explain the presence or functioning of that which is capable of following them.

It is, in other words, impossible to imagine matter that does not have some character of its own. To begin with, it must exist. But if it exists, it must do so in some particular manner, according to its own way of being. Even if we were to say, absurdly, that its only character is to obey external laws, this "law of obedience" itself could not be just another one of the external laws being obeyed. Something will be "going on" that could not be understood as obedience to law, and this something would be an essential expression of what matter was. To apprehend the world we would need to understand this expressive character in its own right, and we could never gain such an understanding solely through a consideration of external laws.

So we can hardly find coherence in the rather dualistic notion that physical laws reside, ghost-like, in some detached, abstract realm from which they impinge upon matter. But if, contrary to our initial assumption, we take laws to be in one way or another bound up with the world's substance — if we take them to be at least in part an expression of this substance — then the difficulty in the conventional view of law becomes even more intense. Surely it makes no sense to say that the world's material phenomena are the result — the wholly explained result — of matter obeying laws which it is itself busy expressing. In whatever manner we prefer to understand the material expression of the laws, this expression cannot be a matter of obedience to the laws being expressed! If whatever is there as the substance of the world at least in part determines the laws, then the laws cannot be said to determine what is there. "
-Talbott, Do Physical Laws Make Things Happen

[Laird]

I think there is also value in Gregg Rosenberg's Liberal Naturalism as described in his A Place for Consciousness: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World, and some excerpts of his book can be found here along with a summary/interview/discussion on this blog.

Have now made my way through all of those links. Very interesting. I think the main question I'd have going into a deeper dive into the book (including for a start actually reading it!) is "What sort of ontological schema is being proposed?" In other words, I read in one of those links that Gregg rejects substance dualism, so I'd be interested to know what exactly he thinks the ontological nature of consciousness is, and especially in contrast to "matter" (if there is even a place for such a category as "matter" in his schema), and how panexperientialism (which I think I read he is advocating) differs from panpsychism and idealism.

More generally in the context of your response: yes, the "just so" picture of causation taken for granted by physicalism/materialism does very much need to be challenged, and more viable alternatives proposed, by thoughtful philosophers like this.

[Laird]

This is pretty much where I'm currently at! As Bergson said, "Change is far more radical than we are at first inclined to suppose."


There is a philosopher, Quentin Meillassoux, who has noted this lack of constraint in matter itself, that a true materialism implies "hyper-chaos" which defies even probability distributions - this is randomness where anything could happen including everything behaving in an orderly fashion forever or every window suddenly becoming a flock of butterflies.

I see parallels in this with Hurm's speculations/insights. Perhaps "hyper-chaos" is the default, and consciousness is the radical explorer-balancer projecting and asserting just enough order onto that chaos for meaning to be possible, but allowing enough lee-way for unexpected "chaotic" revelations/breakthroughs/insights to be both possible and taken advantage of. As in evolution: perhaps consciousness "deliberately" allows for chaotic/random "mutations" within the ordered process of "biological life" which it has projected upon the even more extreme default hyper-chaos, and which it then exploits via attending consciously to those "chaotic mutations" which actually provide a benefit: order out of chaos.

We could instead insist there are Laws, but this leads to more conundrums about these immaterial laws [& their relationship to the rest of the Real]:

[...]

-Talbott, Do Physical Laws Make Things Happen

I have read this (the bits you've quoted) when you have posted it in the past, and it has seemed compelling to me, though I'd want to think about it more carefully before more enthusiastically endorsing it. I haven't yet read the full article, and can't promise to in the immediate future as there is some coding work I want to get on with, though I have been distracting myself from it for several hours!