Neuroscience and free will

This is a thread about free will. My only point is that I have not heard a coherent description of how an indeterministic decision-making method might work. That is it.

It is irrelevant whether I believe the mind is a mechanism, deterministic, semi-random, materialistic, or not-a-hard-problem. Beating up on those issues does not elucidate the free will problem.

~~ Paul

These issues are all closely related and can't really be validly separated. 

The conscious mind that does the thinking and deciding is the big question mark, what we have essentially been talking about. More accurately, what we (or at least one of us) have been trying to figure out - is what exactly is going on in this big question mark of consciousness when it makes a conscious choice and either acts on it or not according to inclination. 

As I have explained, my position on free will is closely related to New Mysterianism in the philosophy of mind. I don't think the essential nature of this is knowable by humans. The ability to decide to make a choice, make it, and then either to act on that choice or not according to inclination are amongst the defining attributes of a conscious sentient agent, whose inner nature is unknowable according to this philosophical position. Certainly the failure of all attempts to date to explain consciousness, and the lack of any sign of a breakthrough in the foreseeable future bode well for this philosophical position. If this philosophical position is correct then all attempts to understand exactly the process of deciding and willing will fail for fundamental reasons - they are very basically futile. 

And secondly, not only is its nature unknowable, but whatever it is, it isn't entirely a deterministic chain plus random perturbations, a mechanism, for the several reasons I have explained. Including because the innumerable creative decisions involved in human artistic and musical and literary creativity actually create new complex ordered information that was not implicit in the former states of matter, and is not implicit in random events. 

To say the former states of matter include former historical human states of mind that deterministically led up to the creative work in question is no deterministic solution, because the former states of mind still had to have come about through earlier conscious sentient intentional creative processes, which is what is being examined. Begs the question.

The operation of a computer executing algorithms is the epitomy of a deterministic process. A few expert quotes relating to its limitations:

"…no operation performed by a computer can create new information." computer scientist Douglas G. Robertson
"The [computing] machine does not create any new information, but it performs a very valuable transformation of known information." Leon Brillouin
"Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine." Kurt Godel

Another reason that I have summarized is not from either philosophy or science: it is from metaphysics, predicated on the clear implications of a spiritual world view. Of course this argument is rejected by materialists as having any validity. As I have explained, if the spiritual world view (the so-called "perennial wisdom") is correct (and there is a load of empirical evidence bearing on this), then soul (and human) free will must exist. If determinism/randomness rule and there is no free will, then there is also no sense or point to a spiritual existence, and therefore it probably doesn't exist. Even if it is possible to conceive of souls with no free will, they make no sense in this metaphysical system.

I am not so sure that modern science has defined "how we think" as humans.  I have never read a paper tackling how humans or any living thing accomplishes the state of understanding as a thought process!  (please direct me to it if you have).

What I meant was that I know what's in my mind when I make a choice but I have no way of knowing what is in the mind of an insect or a plant. We can't see their thoughts any more than I can see yours. All we can do is measure brain activity and monitor behaviour. And all we can say about some animals (dogs, dolphins, primates, parrots, etc.,) is that they seem to be capable of expressing feelings that we humans recognise. Others seem to behave conforming to a recognised and predictable pattern of stimulus-response. That, of course, is only my impression - I have no expertise.

Likewise, I have no expertise with AI and, though I did work in computers, I was not a programmer. Obviously I was aware of programming and algorithms, however, and I have always understood algorithms to be basically a bunch of IF-THEN-ELSE statements along with loops. So we can make complex algorithms which seem to make decisions but, in their basic structure, have they gone beyond those IF-THEN-ELSE routines. Have they introduced subjective feelings or aesthetic discernment? I very much doubt it. So I contend that those qualia are not computable yet they are essential to human decision-making and indicative of free will.

What I meant was that I know what's in my mind when I make a choice but I have no way of knowing what is in the mind of an insect or a plant. We can't see their thoughts any more than I can see yours. All we can do is measure brain activity and monitor behaviour. And all we can say about some animals (dogs, dolphins, primates, parrots, etc.,) is that they seem to be capable of expressing feelings that we humans recognise. Others seem to behave conforming to a recognised and predictable pattern of stimulus-response. That, of course, is only my impression - I have no expertise.

Likewise, I have no expertise with AI and, though I did work in computers, I was not a programmer. Obviously I was aware of programming and algorithms, however, and I have always understood algorithms to be basically a bunch of IF-THEN-ELSE statements along with loops. So we can make complex algorithms which seem to make decisions but, in their basic structure, have they gone beyond those IF-THEN-ELSE routines. Have they introduced subjective feelings or aesthetic discernment? I very much doubt it. So I contend that those qualia are not computable yet they are essential to human decision-making and indicative of free will.

That was well said.

My point is that even at the "if-then" level - there is freedom to select the organism's individual specific information into the process.  I do strongly agree qualia and aesthetic discernment are actual factors coming from the unique mental state of an organism, which contributes to the uniqueness of the outcome.

I agree with qualia and agency, but I have no experience of free will. Thoughts appear in my mind as if by magic. I can control them to some degree. But I don't think I experience any sort of spectrum of free will versus determinism. I cannot tell whether my thoughts are free or determined.

~~ Paul

I don't think there is any way to tease this out through introspection. We seem to be willing to assign agency to events which are determined or random (e.g. https://ruccs.rutgers.edu/images/persona...Choice.pdf). Even if we knew what a "free" event looked like, it would still probably take experimentation to identify it.

Linda

[Laird]

From what I can tell, others seem to be referring to any deterministic cause which is not necessary, and maybe also not sufficient. The examples given certainly seem to be of that type (the not necessary type, anyways). Maybe others aren't aware that causes which are neither necessary nor sufficient are still deterministic causes?

https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/conditions1.htm#section8

Linda

I've edited my original response to this which had been rather unhelpful...

You seem to be confusing necessary conditions with necessitating causes...

[Edit: Although, to be fair, a necessitating cause could (I think) be described as a sufficient  condition which has causal power. A better and more considered response to your post then is this:

This all comes back to what "determinism" means in the first place. I understand that those who propose an exhaustive "deterministic vs random" dichotomy mean by "deterministic" that the causality is necessitating due to physical laws; that is, that in any given situation, only one outcome is physically possible because a specific set of physical laws necessitates or "forces" it. In that context, I am not even saying that there is a deterministic cause which is "not necessary, and maybe also not sufficient"; I am saying that there is a type of causal event (a free will choice) which is neither "deterministic" (in the sense of "necessitated and forced by physical laws beyond the influence of the agent making the choice") nor "random" (in the sense of "unforced by any physical laws even whilst its utter arbitrariness is also beyond the control of the agent making the choice").

The author (Prof. Norman Swartz) of the page to which you linked uses a broader definition of determinism even whilst recognising the sense in which people understand it to be "necessitating". He maintains that those who use this sense of a "necessitating" physical determinism to deny the possibility of free will are engaging in a modal fallacy, and that "physical determinism is no threat to free will", on which you can read more on his page Lecture Notes on Free Will and Determinism, which you might remember me linking to in a thread on free will on Skeptiko - perhaps that's even how you arrived at your own link.

The main difference, I think, in the way things are being framed is that Prof. Swartz includes free will choices under the domain of "physical" (and thus deterministic) laws - because the "laws" of those free will choices can be described (even though they are not prescribed) - whereas I'm separating free will choices out into a separate category.]

I'm pages behind so don't want to say too much for fear of merely regressing the conversation but to me this goes back to the central question that precedes discussion of free will ->

"What does it mean for A to be the cause of B?"

Also at issue is does A represent an object (say a brick) that "causes" and B another object (say a window) upon which A acts (by shattering the glass)? Or rather are these events, and not only this but are these coterminous events?

And secondly, not only is its nature unknowable, but whatever it is, it isn't entirely a deterministic chain plus random perturbations, a mechanism, for the several reasons I have explained. Including because the innumerable creative decisions involved in human artistic and musical and literary creativity actually create new complex ordered information that was not implicit in the former states of matter, and is not implicit in random events. 

To say the former states of matter include former historical human states of mind that deterministically led up to the creative work in question is no deterministic solution, because the former states of mind still had to have come about through earlier conscious sentient intentional creative processes, which is what is being examined. Begs the question.

The operation of a computer executing algorithms is the epitomy of a deterministic process. A few expert quotes relating to its limitations:

"…no operation performed by a computer can create new information." computer scientist Douglas G. Robertson
"The [computing] machine does not create any new information, but it performs a very valuable transformation of known information." Leon Brillouin
"Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine." Kurt Godel

Another reason that I have summarized is not from either philosophy or science: it is from metaphysics, predicated on the clear implications of a spiritual world view. Of course this argument is rejected by materialists as having any validity. As I have explained, if the spiritual world view (the so-called "perennial wisdom") is correct (and there is a load of empirical evidence bearing on this), then soul (and human) free will must exist. If determinism/randomness rule and there is no free will, then there is also no sense or point to a spiritual existence, and therefore it probably doesn't exist. Even if it is possible to conceive of souls with no free will, they make no sense in this metaphysical system.

What is "new"? The concept of novelty is essential to this discussion.

A deterministic process could create something never seen before, but it can be argued that the information was always there just waiting to be transformed.

A deterministic process with random initial conditions could create something truly new although constrained by probabilistic boundaries and without "intent".

A deterministic process with apparently random initial conditions that can be hijacked by an entity possessing intention and ability to direct the mechanism fits our intuitive understanding of free will and creativity.

This doesn't answer the questions of "what is an entity?" and "how does an entity interface with the normally random factors to control them in a meaningful way?", but simply removes it one step further beyond our domain. The best answer for these questions to avoid an infinite regress might be to invoke the Loop of Oneness of existence which is another way of saying: this is the beginning and the end of all knowledge and reality.

I'm pages behind so don't want to say too much for fear of merely regressing the conversation but to me this goes back to the central question that precedes discussion of free will ->

"What does it mean for A to be the cause of B?"

Also at issue is does A represent an object (say a brick) that "causes" and B another object (say a window) upon which A acts (by shattering the glass)? Or rather are these events, and not only this but are these coterminous events?

It means, that all else being equal, A is followed by B. A in your example would be "throw a brick at a window with sufficient force to break the glass" and B is "broken window". It doesn't mean that there aren't other ways to break the window. Nor does it mean that under a different set of conditions the glass may not break.

Deterministic means that under the identical conditions, the outcome is identical. It doesn't mean that the outcome is necessarily predictable (e.g. Chaos). It also can apply to anything - not just "matter" or "energy", but also "thoughts". It isn't a statement about mechanism or fundamentals, but about direction. 

Random refers to an inability to assign agency - whether that inability refers to physical characteristics, or to thoughts. Under the identical conditions, the outcomes vary in a way which is unchosen.

"Free" presumably implies that, like "random" and unlike "deterministic", the outcomes vary. But like "deterministic" and unlike "random", there is agency. I'm struggling with what that would look like (it seems paradoxical). "Under identical agency, the outcomes vary with respect to that agency."

Linda

These issues are all closely related and can't really be validly separated.

Then I'm happy if you don't separate them. I just don't want you to think that I'm assuming something like materialism. I'm not. I just want a handwaving description of how an indeterministic yet nonrandom decision can be made under any metaphysic whatsoever.

The operation of a computer executing algorithms is the epitomy of a deterministic process. A few expert quotes relating to its limitations:

"…no operation performed by a computer can create new information." computer scientist Douglas G. Robertson
"The [computing] machine does not create any new information, but it performs a very valuable transformation of known information." Leon Brillouin
"Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine." Kurt Godel

Robertson and Brillouin are wrong, or they are using some very interesting definition of information. A computer program can paint a nice abstract painting. Under what definition of information is that not new information?

Another way to approach this: What is an example of something that does create new nonrandom information, under whatever definition of information these guys are using?

Another reason that I have summarized is not from either philosophy or science: it is from metaphysics, predicated on the clear implications of a spiritual world view. Of course this argument is rejected by materialists as having any validity. As I have explained, if the spiritual world view (the so-called "perennial wisdom") is correct (and there is a load of empirical evidence bearing on this), then soul (and human) free will must exist. If determinism/randomness rule and there is no free will, then there is also no sense or point to a spiritual existence, and therefore it probably doesn't exist. Even if it is possible to conceive of souls with no free will, they make no sense in this metaphysical system.

Again, though, this doesn't help us understand how a free decision is made. I cannot accept that it is possible simply because I'd like to believe in some metaphysic that supposedly implies it.

~~ Paul