Neuroscience and free will

No, the first part of that contention begs the question. It simply assumes that "complete laws" are prescriptive aka necessitating, without providing a justification for why. So, whilst you could contend as much, it would require a supporting argument which currently is lacking.

And the second part of the contention simply reiterates the definition of "prescriptive laws", which is not especially useful.

This is interesting to me because it gets into the question of how one even comes to regard a pattern of behavior as a law. It requires a lack of uniqueness, such that interest-relative causal conditions yield an effect so often we assign a probability of 100% to the outcome.

This helps me see Bergson's issue with the spatialization of time and mechanization of consciousness. Each decision is a Unique Event, given memory of past decisions informs the agent's new decision making. There's no way to have points representing decisions on a graph for curve fitting, because points imply identity save for positions.

Additionally trying to tease apart the qualia of influencing reasons (which include qualia) and assign them "force" vectors is just impossible. Bergson's arguments go deep into these issues and this seems to me an account for why there are no laws of mind.

It's a negative argument on the failure to try and describe Mind from the World, rather than a positive account, but it does get into what I think is how most people see this question. Few will care about the (AFAICTell) unprovable assertion things must be determined or random - that sounds like something out of a Marketing for Materialism seminar: "Tell them that it's okay free will isn't possible under our paradigm b/c it's impossible under all paradigms." 

I think reproducible macro-PK (materialization, telekinesis, teleportation) would settle the question of mental causation for most. For the remaining few of us there's long bouts of philosophy to look forward to...

If I'm understanding you here, the point is that only mental laws of logic could hold across all possible worlds?

So this is another way of saying that the determination of events has to involve, at some fundamental level, the entities involved in those events to make any possibility determinate?

I still don't understand why a law being necessary means that it holds in all possible worlds, or why it being descriptive means it cannot hold in any possible world. Can't we have one world that is purely deterministic and another world that is deterministic/random and another world that has room for free events?

I'm not great with terminology, but are we ruling out contingent necessity?

~~ Paul

I still don't understand why a law being necessary means that it holds in all possible worlds, or why it being descriptive means it cannot hold in any possible world. Can't we have one world that is purely deterministic and another world that is deterministic/random and another world that has room for free events?

I'm not great with terminology, but are we ruling out contingent necessity?

~~ Paul

I'm very much at the beginning of reading about the use of "Possible Worlds" so take my thinking with a grain of salt, but I think necessary means it can't be otherwise.

It's less about alternative dimensions/planets in a Multiverse rather than counterfactuals/possibilities in this reality. So if a law can be thought of as not binding [thus different in some other world] then it means there's no explanation, in this reality, for it not being contingent and thus able to be altered.

It's less about alternative dimensions/planets in a Multiverse rather than counterfactuals/possibilities in this reality. So if a law can be thought of as not binding [thus different in some other world] then it means there's no explanation, in this reality, for it not being contingent and thus able to be altered.

I'm not sure how law A is relevant to both our world and the other world unless the two worlds are essentially the same. What if event X always leads to Y in our world, but in the other world there is an additional factor involved? Then the law for our world and the law for the other world would be different and so incomparable. I think this problem is captured in the differences between nomological, logical, and metaphysical necessity.

Now, I agree that it may be impossible to explain causes and effects at all, which means there is no basis to say things like "always leads to" and "involved." But if that's the case, isn't this conversation just hopeless?

~~ Paul

I'm not sure how law A is relevant to both our world and the other world unless the two worlds are essentially the same. What if event X always leads to Y in our world, but in the other world there is an additional factor involved? Then the law for our world and the law for the other world would be different and so incomparable. I think this problem is captured in the differences between nomological, logical, and metaphysical necessity.

Unfamiliar with Nomological Necessity...but regarding the logical necessity I think that is what has to be true in all possible worlds which I take it to mean the same thing as axiomatically true in this one world/reality. I'm not sure any law is metaphysically necessary unless it follows from a logical law?

Now, I agree that it may be impossible to explain causes and effects at all, which means there is no basis to say things like "always leads to" and "involved." But if that's the case, isn't this conversation just hopeless?

I guess it depends on whether one seeks the definitive explanation or a set of explanations that sound reasonable?

That, and if one was looking for a book to read on a long flight we can pile up suggestions...

Unfamiliar with Nomological Necessity...but regarding the logical necessity I think that is what has to be true in all possible worlds which I take it to mean the same thing as axiomatically true in this one world/reality. I'm not sure any law is metaphysically necessary unless it follows from a logical law?

Yes, logical necessity means the same in all worlds by logic. Nomological necessity, I believe, is physical necessity, so only necessary in one world. Metaphysical necessity mean necessary in all worlds, but not logically. I think.

I guess it depends on whether one seeks the definitive explanation or a set of explanations that sound reasonable?

That, and if one was looking for a book to read on a long flight we can pile up suggestions...

That's it!

~~ Paul

[Laird]

Why are you abandoning the conversation?

Mostly because our presuppositions are so different that when I share an answer that to me seems satisfactory given my presuppositions, to you it seems unsatisfactory given yours, and so you keep on asking the same questions[*], which seems to me to be a fruitless way for us to spend our time. The only way to resolve this problem definitively would be to in turn resolve the differences in our presuppositions, especially on the nature of mind/consciousness, but it would be a long, slow process, and I am not sure whether it would even bear fruit at the end... is it worth embarking on? A lot of material has been posted, mostly by Sci, to this forum in various threads that you could read yourself to find out why "proponents prone", so to speak, on free will, consciousness, and mind. It's probably more fruitful for you to read some of that stuff and get to the bottom of it that way than for us to go around in circles here.

[*] The prime example is: "How is a free decision made?". It seems to me that the likely reason why you don't accept the answer(s) I've shared with you several times by now is that you see consciousness and the brain as identical, and the brain as a massively complex internetwork of neurons, and so you expect that an explanation must ultimately reduce to a massively complex series of neural events, and so, when, from my provisional perspective in which consciousness is not identical to the brain, nor reducible to it and the neural network, but instead is in relationship with the brain, I offer an answer that is quite simple and not massively complex, you cannot accept it. And if I haven't quite characterised the problem correctly, I've probably come near enough to make the point. And so the merry-go-round continues...

[Laird]

If I'm understanding you here, the point is that only mental laws of logic could hold across all possible worlds?

So this is another way of saying that the determination of events has to involve, at some fundamental level, the entities involved in those events to make any possibility determinate?

Yes, as I understand it, the laws of logic hold across all possible worlds, as do all of the necessarily true propositions that can be expressed using them. For example, in every possible world it is true that "If P implies Q, and P is true, then Q is true" (which is the simplest form of modus ponens - but necessarily true propositions don't have to be simple).

As for what else might be demonstrably necessary, I understand that there is an argument for a Necessary Ground of Being, but I am not intimately familiar with that argument - I think you are much more familiar with it than I am. Kind of roughly putting it in my own, potentially flawed, terms, we could say that for any given possible world, there is an answer to the question "Why is this possible world, and not some other possible world, the actual world?", and that answer is that there is a Ground of Being which "selected" (or, perhaps, continuously, in every moment, "selects") that possible world as (to be) the actual one. So, this Ground of Being - whatever it is - is necessary because in every possible world that question has - must have - an answer, and it - whatever it is - is the answer in every possible world.

Riffing off this, and by way of answering your second question, we could suggest that the Ground of Being, which is the ultimate determinant of "why things are as they are and not some other way", delegates some of that determining power to us conscious entities.

Beyond that... again, I'm not well-read enough to know what else might be considered to be necessary, but I think that which I've written above re the Ground of Being addresses a couple of comments/questions by/from Paul and Linda in recent posts (Linda suggesting that the Ground of Being is some sort of folksy notion whereas it also has a philosophical basis as roughly sketched above, and Paul asking what would be so special about grounding in a (necessary) Ground of Being versus in some arbitrary (set of) (contingent) physical facts(s)).

[Laird]

Some thoughts on the different types of necessity, and to answer a question that Paul put: free will is ultimately a metaphysical concept, and so metaphysical necessity is obviously a relevant type of necessity. "Nomological necessity" is relevant only to the extent that "physical laws" which are beyond the determining power of the free agent, apply to (and thus restrict[*]) that agent. We've defined the acronym "GCDE" as a "generalised conditional description of an event". We've stipulated that some GCDEs are "laws" in that their conditions pick out many events in the world. Some of those "laws" in turn might be "nomologically necessary", whereas others are merely "accidentally true generalisations" that just happen to apply to multiple events. So, even given a set of "nomological necessary laws", it remains plausible that they have only limited applicability to free agents, whose (the agents') metaphysical freedom gives them ultimate determining power over at least some of the remaining "GCDEs".

[*] ETA: Though it should be pointed out that there is an argument that as much as "restricting" agents, physical laws are necessary for the agent to exercise freedom, in that they provide the structure within which decisions are meaningful and which decisions manipulate.

Mostly because our presuppositions are so different that when I share an answer that to me seems satisfactory given my presuppositions, to you it seems unsatisfactory given yours, and so you keep on asking the same questions, which seems to me to be a fruitless way for us to spend our time.

...

The prime example is: "How is a free decision made?". It seems to me that the likely reason why you don't accept the answer(s) I've shared with you several times by now is ...

... I offer an answer that is quite simple and not massively complex, you cannot accept it. And if I haven't quite characterised the problem correctly, I've probably come near enough to make the point. And so the merry-go-round continues...

I know I've mentioned this before but history does seem to be repeating itself (pun intended) and to illustrate the point I've culled a few frustrated responses from LoneShaman in that afore-mentioned long debate on the Sekptiko (Mind-Energy) forum. It stuck in my mind that Paul's debating tactic back then was simply to keep repeating the question as though he was being ignored yet LS (and Michael Larkin and others) wrote pages of extended responses to his questions just as Laird and Sciborg have done here. Yet still the constant repetition of the same question. Here's a few samples of LoneShaman indicating his frustration.

I have repeatedly stated which theory is the one I think holds the most promise. It is not from an Id theorists, but the implications most certainly point in that direction. Yep you just made another strawman.

You just keep repeating the same garbage and you have painted yourself into a corner. Again.

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Paul, I've already explained my position on page one.

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It's getting a little tedious to have to repeat myself over and over.

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It's like talking to a brick wall. Although I don't have to repeat myself as much to a brick wall. 

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I did explain it. You just didn’t get it. 

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You just keep regurgitating the same stupid questions and seem to suffer from severe memory loss, or perhaps you are simply a troll and don't mind appearing dense to get a reaction.

Every single one of these has already been covered. That is the last time I will repeat myself to you.