Neuroscience and free will

I can see how this would sound like a giant leap if made all at once, but I tried to explain that at length earlier... If an event has a causal chain, that is what I am calling an explanation. If there is no causal chain then there is no answer to how or why. Paul has said that he cannot imagine something having no causal chain attached to it and that is understandable as the mind balks at something having absolutely no explanation. If something follows a causal chain then it adheres to rational rules of logic and is repeatable and - with sufficient computation and knowledge of initial conditions - deterministic and is able to be examined scientifically as a mechanism. If something truly doesn't have an explanation then insanity/creativity/magic has entered the universe. So things that lend themselves to being studied scientifically - things that have explanations - have the qualities that fit under the tent of materialism which considers things to be inanimate objects and mechanisms. So anything that is able to be studied scientifically is ultimately no threat to materialism. What is not able to be studied scientifically is anything capricious or unique.

The question at the heart of this thread is: are we truly free to will things as we choose or are our choices merely massively complex deterministic processes which appear to be free because we are not sufficiently advanced to analyze all the mechanisms involved... but theoretically if we could build a supercomputer model of the brain and body and all the tiniest particle physics involved... would it be able to predict a choice? If so, then we are merely mechanisms and free will is an illusion. But if we have true free will then something other which is capricious and entirely unpredictable and has no explanation enters into the mechanism and alters the causal chain.


Can you give an example?

Radio waves might in some sense be considered immaterial, but they are still in the domain of materialism. They are still treated as predictable objects (waves and particles).

You don't state it but isn't your ineffable "something other" that you say just might (if we have free will) intervene in the deterministic causal chain, the human mind that exhibits subjectivity, agency, volition, desire, intentionality and creates for instance a great musical composition, say the act of Mozart in creating his Symphony no. 35 the Haffner? A work exhibiting beauty and majesty, immaterial qualities perceived in the work by another agent or being ineffably outside the causal chain - the music lover. 

A greatly complex succession of organized tonal harmonies, a large chunk of complex specified information that didn't exist before, created from nothing. How else would you interpret artistic, musical or literary creativity? Could it even possibly be the result of a causal deterministic chain of events, a mechanism? All mechanisms in our lives regardless of complexity are totally incapable of creativity, as they are of agency and intentionality. To say nothing of the qualia of perception. 

It always amazes me that many intellectuals can through a rigid materialistic reasoning process essentially deny the essence of their own existence as creative human beings by denying the existence of anything but deterministic causal chains and true randomness.

It always amazes me that many intellectuals can through a rigid materialistic reasoning process essentially deny the essence of their own existence as creative human beings by denying the existence of anything but deterministic causal chains and true randomness.

But surely you'll agree that the way you'd like things to be is not necessarily the way they are.

In my case, since I can't understand how free will might work, I don't feel any less creative because my creativity is deterministic + random. This extra thing that you apparently feel regarding your creativity is not in my awareness. I cannot add it to my awareness because I do not know what it is.

~~ Paul

"creativity is deterministic"

Surely an oxymoron?

Surely an oxymoron?

When determinism is mixed with a little randomness, why not creativity?

I agree that our desired feelings about creativity don't mix well with determinism. But we can't just define creativity as requiring that elusive third way of making decisions, because that would be begging the question. So we must remain on a high wire, wondering where we will land when we fall.

~~ Paul

When determinism is mixed with a little randomness, why not creativity?

I agree that our desired feelings about creativity don't mix well with determinism. But we can't just define creativity as requiring that elusive third way of making decisions, because that would be begging the question. So we must remain on a high wire, wondering where we will land when we fall.

~~ Paul

From a letter written by Mozart:

When I feel well and in a good humor, or when I am taking a drive or walking after a good meal, or in the night when I cannot sleep, thoughts crowd into my mind as easily as you could wish. Whence and how do they come? I do not know and I have nothing to do with it. Those which please me, I keep in my head and hum them; at least others have told me that I do so. Once I have my theme, another melody comes, linking itself to the first one, in accordance with the needs of the composition as a whole: the counterpoint, the part of each instrument, and all these melodic fragments at last produce the entire work.

Another letter:

Then my soul is on fire with inspiration, if however nothing occurs to distract my attention. The work grows; I keep expanding it, conceiving it more and more clearly until I have the entire composition finished in my head though it may be long… It does not come to me successively, with its various parts worked out in detail, as they will be later on, but it is in its entirety that my imagination lets me hear it.

I wonder how poor Mozart would have reacted to a materialist skeptic telling him that these experiences were merely a mechanistic deterministic causal chain sort of process going on in his neurons (imagine a vast machine of clockwork gears and levers) leavened by occasional random discharges. He probably would have laughed.

When determinism is mixed with a little randomness, why not creativity?


~~ Paul

So no room for intent, then? When Picasso painted this, for example ...

   

... all it took was a certain pre-determined state of all the physical particles and properties of the universe mixed with a little random firing of neurons which old Pablo (and the art world in general) mistakenly took for creative intent? Of course, we would agree that Picasso had years of training and experience by which to hone his technical skills but surely there is a difference between creative genius and the technical skill of a well-trained draughtsman? By the way, I'm using Picasso as an example because his art was such a departure from the norm that it shouts creative novelty and invention - I'm not personally a fan of his work, preferring his impressionist predecessors.

From a letter written by Mozart:


Another letter:


I wonder how poor Mozart would have reacted to a materialist skeptic telling him that these experiences were merely a mechanistic deterministic causal chain sort of process going on in his neurons leavened by occasional random discharges. He probably would have laughed.

Sorry, buddy ... I think we were on the same wavelength thereby making a similar point and typing at the same time.

From a letter written by Mozart:


Another letter:


I wonder how poor Mozart would have reacted to a materialist skeptic telling him that these experiences were merely a mechanistic deterministic causal chain sort of process going on in his neurons (imagine a vast machine of clockwork gears and levers) leavened by occasional random discharges. He probably would have laughed.

He certainly might have laughed. However, the universe feels no obligation due to his amusement.

~~ Paul

So no room for intent, then? When Picasso painted this, for example ...



... all it took was a certain pre-determined state of all the physical particles and properties of the universe mixed with a little random firing of neurons which old Pablo (and the art world in general) mistakenly took for creative intent? Of course, we would agree that Picasso had years of training and experience by which to hone his technical skills but surely there is a difference between creative genius and the technical skill of a well-trained draughtsman? By the way, I'm using Picasso as an example because his art was such a departure from the norm that it shouts creative novelty and invention - I'm not personally a fan of his work, preferring his impressionist predecessors.

I can't answer without knowing your definition of intent. Again, if it necessarily involves some third way of making decisions (about what to paint), then it begs the question.

I'm not sure why determinism cannot produce feelings of intent.

~~ Paul

I'm not sure why determinism cannot produce feelings of intent.

~~ Paul

Because you refuse to acknowledge subjectivity. Determinism is purely objective: a physical causal chain. Feelings leading to choices and intent are subjective. They may have objective influences (maybe the weather is dismal influencing the mood of someone) but they are not objective in themselves.