Neuroscience and free will

Paul, I'm going to try to take things step-by-step, and to get your agreement at each step. I'm hoping that that will be a more fruitful approach.

[Edit: In fairness, I should define my goal for this step-by-step process, so that you can better decide whether you even want to participate. My goal is to reach a common understanding of the meaning of words like "determinism" and "law", of the implications of those meanings, of the concepts related to them and to free will in general, and of those of our basic presuppositions which are shared (or at least of your presuppositions), and, having done so, to then (hopefully) suggest why/how free will is plausible/likely given those meanings, implications, concepts, and presuppositions.]

I'm happy to have a crack at this, but I'm not really sure of the point. It seems like a lot of work just to end up with a couple of sentences that give an inkling of how a free decision is made. But let's go for it.

So, for this first step: my contention is that any given "law" of physics is or can be (re)framed as a conditional description of an event. Do you agree with that contention?

A couple of clarifications/caveats to help you to decide whether or not you agree:

1. The description, as for the examples in my post, is typically at a high degree of abstraction/generality: it typically omits many specific, individuating features/characteristics of the event. The corollary of this is that the description typically describes not just one given event in reality but many.
   
2. For our purposes, events subsume states. Take, for example, a potential "law" of physics which stipulates that the charge on some fundamental particle is a constant. We might conventionally consider this to be a state (of the particle), but we can for our purposes formulate it in terms of (an) event(s) like this: "When something happens involving a fundamental particle P, the charge on that particle [is / becomes / remains at] C". Here, the "something" which describes a given event is understood to mean "anything", i.e., it describes all given events involving all given particles P, including those "events" for which we might more conventionally say that "nothing happens". This is admittedly a slightly unwieldy formulation, but I think it is logically consistent and viable. If you don't like its unwieldiness then perhaps we can work states into the primary contention, but this distinction is not really material to my point - anyhow, let me know what you think.
   

I don't think I can answer this question. The constant charge of a particle is a fact, not a law, though I suppose you can turn it into a conditional. I don't understand physical laws well enough to determine whether they can all be framed in term of events.

Anyway, let's assume I agree and continue.

~~ Paul

That's a possible understanding of determinism, although there seem to be prescriptive understandings too (Paul's understanding seems more prescriptive than descriptive to me, but we'll hopefully clarify that as the discussion progresses).

I think laws are descriptive, but when we are confident of them we talk as if they are prescriptive. However, that does not give us the "right" to describe individual events and call them laws. A law describes a large class of phenomena.

Also, I'm not sure that descritivism means we are free to assume that the described phenomena could have happened differently. Just because we shouldn't assume the laws are prescriptive doesn't mean that they are in fact flexible.

~~ Paul

Does he venture any description of how a free decision is made?

~~ Paul

Since Gregg Rosenberg posits Consciousness is the Carrier of Causation, it might be better stated that free will explains how reality works.

One of the reasons I suspect all causation is mental - it explains the world better than the physicalist picture where only luck holds causal sequences - and thus all of reality - together.

Though I don't think Rosenberg has the full picture, to me it seems there's still a potential necessity for some kind of God or other Ground of Being to yield a satisfying metaphysical picture.

An interesting post from another recent blog:

9
ScuzzaMan 
Three sentences from a Michael Egnor article: “The question that naturally follows is this: Is determinism true? If so, free will is impossible in principle. If not, free will is possible.”

"Actually determinism is irrelevant. The reason people obsess about it is because they have materialist assumptions. If materialism is not true, and matter is only moved by spirit (and not by itself, as materialism irrationally supposes) then what happens AFTER it is moved (is it deterministic or probabilistic) is of much interest but not of primary interest.

If materialism is not true and determinism is true, then free will still remains absolutely possible, since will is a property of the spiritual realm and not of the material.

Basic reasoning skills remain in short supply in these straitened times …"

Comments? Can we reasonably demand an analytical description of free will as a process if it is a basic axiomatic property of an entirely different realm of existence? Is this short post above too simple minded to consider? I don't think so.

Since Gregg Rosenberg posits Consciousness is the Carrier of Causation, it might be better stated that free will explains how reality works.

One of the reasons I suspect all causation is mental - it explains the world better than the physicalist picture where only luck holds causal sequences - and thus all of reality - together.

Though I don't think Rosenberg has the full picture, to me it seems there's still a potential necessity for some kind of God or other Ground of Being to yield a satisfying metaphysical picture.

I don't understand how a God gets us out of the need to specify logically how a free decision is made. God may be able to do it, but God ain't a'splainin' how it works.

~~ Paul

An interesting post from another recent blog:

9
ScuzzaMan 
Three sentences from a Michael Egnor article: “The question that naturally follows is this: Is determinism true? If so, free will is impossible in principle. If not, free will is possible.”


Comments? Can we reasonably demand an analytical description of free will as a process if it is a property of an entirely different realm of existence? Is this short post above too simple minded to consider? I don't think so.

Seems like a big just-so claim. I'm willing to scrap both materialism and the deterministic/random dichotomy. I don't then suddenly go aha! now I understand how indeterministic decisions are logically possible.

~~ Paul

But so were the example "laws" of physics that I gave. The take-away from the examples I gave was supposed to be that the "laws" of physics are (or can be taken to be) conditional descriptions of events, and I deliberately framed my example "laws" such that they were conditional descriptions of events.

So, for this first step: my contention is that any given "law" of physics is or can be (re)framed as a conditional description of an event. Do you agree with that contention?

A couple of clarifications/caveats to help you to decide whether or not you agree:

1. The description, as for the examples in my post, is typically at a high degree of abstraction/generality: it typically omits many specific, individuating features/characteristics of the event. The corollary of this is that the description typically describes not just one given event in reality but many.
   
2. For our purposes, events subsume states. Take, for example, a potential "law" of physics which stipulates that the charge on some fundamental particle is a constant. We might conventionally consider this to be a state (of the particle), but we can for our purposes formulate it in terms of (an) event(s) like this: "When something happens involving a fundamental particle P, the charge on that particle [is / becomes / remains at] C". Here, the "something" which describes a given event is understood to mean "anything", i.e., it describes all given events involving all given particles P, including those "events" for which we might more conventionally say that "nothing happens". This is admittedly a slightly unwieldy formulation, but I think it is logically consistent and viable. If you don't like its unwieldiness then perhaps we can work states into the primary contention, but this distinction is not really material to my point - anyhow, let me know what you think.
   

Do you mean conditional as in "here are the priors that give us the result" or "the laws of physics are contingent" where I'd use contingent both in the sense of subject to chance & dependent on circumstance.

I think the "dependent on circumstance" branch, that the "laws" are really instances of findings in circumstances , challenges their universality. The "subject to chance" aspect challenges their immutability.

Regarding events, are we including/assuming that there's an explanation for why a different event doesn't occur. As in, why does the charge hold - even over a range - for particular conditions? Because to me that's where Final Cause enters the picture, perhaps with Formal & Material as well.

Additionally when asking "Why doesn't an alternative happen?" is there another good example of restriction via selection of possibility besides our own mental causation?

An interesting post from another recent blog:

9
ScuzzaMan 
Three sentences from a Michael Egnor article: “The question that naturally follows is this: Is determinism true? If so, free will is impossible in principle. If not, free will is possible.”


Comments? Can we reasonably demand an analytical description of free will as a process if it is a property of an entirely different realm of existence? Is this short post above too simple minded to consider? I don't think so.

Well I think the three sentences get us to the right explanatory space, in that free will has to explained within the metaphysical picture of cause, preceding the causal sequences where causation is taken for granted. He is also right [to note that] randomness - events that happen for no reason at all - opens a space for events happening under mental causation. After all, only the latter could be in accord with the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

So he's right that where others would place randomness - the particle moving orthogonal to expectation, the sudden collapse of a supposed natural law - is where to set a place for free will.

But setting free will in some other realm...that link I mentioned to you by Arvan gets into this idea, that free will is "Kantian" in that exists in a higher frame of reality. So it presents an interesting perspective in providing a place for free will in the causal chain, in that according to Arvan's P2P Simulation Hypothesis the state of physical reality is decided by the interaction/conjunction of peers serving as observers/readers of the 2-D information plane.

However, as Arvan himself notes, one cannot actually then figure out whether the higher frame itself is deterministic. I think one needs to consider things such as Intentionality of minds (as Tallis does) & Final Causes (as Feser does) in all things if one wants to present a more confident - and arguably less extravagant - metaphysical picture that has a place for free will.

All to say I'm in agreement that free will is a non-composite aspect of an agent, but I am wary of trying to justify it only by placing the agent outside of the causal picture that we'd accept for everything else.

Best to start with a brick going through a window...

I don't understand how a God gets us out of the need to specify logically how a free decision is made. God may be able to do it, but God ain't a'splainin' how it works.

~~ Paul

Well it would depend on the God's characteristics, but I was thinking less about free will in that statement and more generally about the nature of reality.

From an article on some newer, post Libet, neurological research verifying and clarifying the "free won't":   
 

"....until recently, many neuroscientists would have said any decision you made was not truly free but actually determined by neural processes outside of your conscious control.

Luckily, for those who find this state of affairs philosophically (or existentially) perplexing, things are starting to look up. Thanks to some new breakthrough studies, including one published last month in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers in Germany (at https://www.pnas.org/content/113/4/1080), there’s now some evidence pointing in the other direction: The neuroscientists are backtracking on past bold claims and painting a rather more appealing account of human autonomy. We may have more control over certain processes than those initial experiments indicated. 

The German neuroscientists took a different approach from past work, using a form of brain-computer integration to see whether participants could cancel a movement after the onset of the nonconscious preparatory brain activity identified by Libet. If they could, it would be a sign that humans can consciously intervene and “veto” processes that neuroscience has previously considered automatic and beyond willful control.

The participants’ task started off simply enough: They had to press a foot pedal as quickly as possible whenever they saw a green light and cancel this movement whenever they saw a red light. Things got trickier when the researchers put the red light under the control of a computer that was monitoring the participants’ own brain waves. Whenever the computer detected signs of nonconscious preparatory brain activity, it switched on the red light. If this preparatory activity is truly a signal of actions that are beyond conscious control, the participants should have been incapable of responding to these sudden red lights. In fact, in many cases the participants were able to cancel the nonconscious preparatory brain activity and stop their foot movement before it even began.

Now, there was a point of no return — red lights that appeared too close (less than about one-quarter of a second) to the beginning of a foot movement could not be completely inhibited — there simply wasn’t time for the new cancellation signal to overtake the earlier command to move. But still, the principle stands — these results suggest at least some of the activity identified by Libet can, in fact, be vetoed by conscious will."