Neuroscience and free will

So the almost perfect determinism of a computer is just a mental abstraction?

~~ Paul

wtf

Paul - you better than most people - know that computers output "perfect" results because of error correction software.  Without that software fixing the signals through the circuits - many applications would be useless.

Mind can arrange (design) logically organized algorithms (information objects).  But once structured, they are not "mental" they are simply abstract instructions.

I think it the same in an organic context.  Living things embedded instructions in DNA/RNA/Ribosomes mentally.  But once structured, they are not "mental" they are simply abstract instructions.

wtf

Paul - you better than most - know that computers output "perfect" results because of error correction software.  Without that software fixing the signals through the circuits - many applications would be useless.

Mind can arrange logical organized algorithms.  But once structured, they are not "mental" they are simply abstract instructions.

Quick question - what do you see as the difference between a Two-Stage Model for Free Will and a Randomized Algorithm where the sequential steps in the algorithm make use of randomness in order to give a good enough answer in a limited time/memory space?

[Laird]

What is the point of bastardizing the term law to pertain to a single event? [...] [T]his [is a] redefinition of the term[.]

OK, let's clarify that here we're talking about "physical laws" in general, rather than about some particular subset of them which we think we have approximated via the scientific method, such as those which we refer to as "the laws of physics". In the light of your objection, we could consider this to be a new term: we are not referring to "scientific laws" but more broadly to "physical laws", being the comprehensive set of actually true conditional descriptions of events in reality (whatever those actually true descriptions are, and regardless of whether we can ever know them - for more on this see my next post to Sci).

So, if we want this set to be comprehensive, then we have to allow for the possibility that for some members, the conditions pick out only one actual event in the world, right? If not, then on what basis would we exclude that possibility?

All I'm getting at here is that even though a law is descriptive, it may in fact be describing phenomena that always follow the law.

Then what you're getting at is a meaningless tautology.

In the context of descriptive laws, to "follow" a law simply means to be described by that law, so your statement amounts to:

"...even though a law is descriptive, it may in fact be describing phenomena that are always described by their descriptions".

Well, of course that which is described by a description is always described by its description! You're simply restating in the second part of the sentence that which you stated in the first - you aren't saying anything meaningful.

I'm not really looking for laws, although that would be interesting. I'm looking for a simple logical description of the steps I take to make a free decision. I realize that "steps" sound mechanical, so feel free to substitute another word. There must be something like steps.

Sometimes there might be steps, sometimes not. It would depend on how the freely willing agent freely willed the choice, which (the method by which to make the choice) might itself be (sometimes explicitly) freely chosen by the agent.

If not, and the decision literally pops into my mind, then I claim that decision is random.

The complement of "a decision made in steps" is not necessarily "a decision literally popping into your mind". That would imply that the decision came to you from outside and that you were not responsible for its entering and impacting upon your mind. Another possibility beyond this false dichotomy is "a decision made instantaneously by you". This could be a decision freely willed from within, which occurs in the context of and takes into account your "memories and the current state of affairs".

But the range of possibilities is limited!

I meant more limited than it would have been had there not been such (a) law(s). And I ought not to have spoken of "possibilities" but of "actualities": if we are free, yet despite a wide range of possible choices open to us we make the same actual choices such that our choices can be described by very general laws, then we might not be making very good use of our freedom, and might (depending on further context) in practice (albeit not metaphysically) not be free... but as I originally wrote/implied, those sort of assessments depend on a lot more than what's at issue here.

The decision has to have something to do with the question at hand, no?

I wouldn't say "has to" but I would agree that generally, for most reasonable people making reasonable decisions, that would be the case.

I don't know where you're going.

Good. That'll stop you from objecting on the basis that you don't like the destination.

Yes, I agree that the world is not necessitated by true descriptions of it.

Good. I'll hold off on sharing my next contention with you until we've reached agreement on the definition of a "physical law".

[Laird]

But we can only express true confidence for the circumstances in which we observe the behavior working according to the laws yes?

If we're talking epistemically, then yes. I'm talking metaphysically though. I'm suggesting that there is a set of laws which comprehensively describes the world (or that there would be such a set "by the end of time", if it were held that some laws did not become true until the time at which they apply - i.e., if the future is not in some sense "fixed" or "hypothetically knowable in advance").

Whether or not we can know what those laws are, and the extent to which we can know or approximate them, is an epistemological question.

Whether or not they exist in the first place is a metaphysical one.

If nothing is holding the laws in place, then it seems they are subject to change easily enough. They only hold by luck alone.

Right. Could we frame this as a scientific question? Our null hypothesis would be that the laws hold by luck alone, in which case we could (theoretically, probably not practically) obtain a p-value for the extent to which we observe consistent laws which do not randomly change. I guess one problem might be that "random" laws need not be those which change within time but rather change in relation to the universe as a whole including all time.

Of course this is just one issue with the laws and the dualist interactionism that would be required to make them work, and in that Talbott paper I mentioned in a previous reply to you I think it shows even then there would have to be something within the entities to which the law applies that is amenable to obedience.

Argh, I still haven't read that paper. What you say sounds reasonable though.

So even if there are laws that can interact with substance, what stops the amenable aspect of the entities supposedly bound from "revolting"?

Good question. It can't, on pain of infinite regression, be another law.

Are you thinking of Hoffman's Idealism with that last line?

I was thinking along animistic lines - I haven't looked into Hoffman's views.

But even if we take the neutral road and just look at any causal event, there has to be some final delimiting aspect of the Ground (of Being). It is not like the horizontal axis of time where one can ponder if there is an infinite causal chain regressing indefinitely into the past. On the vertical temporal axis, which is an indication of the present moment, without some delimiter anything/nothing/everything could happen yet we know from observation of change that at least in our corner of reality this is not the case.

Right - something like this does seem to be necessary. Here's a question I'd be interested to get your take on: is the Ground (of Being) in this sense a part of Reality or apart from Reality (where by "Reality" I mean "everything")?

Yet why just superposition, given as argued above there is a need for possibility selection in every causal instance? Combine this with arguments for ubiquity of consciousness (see here for one) and/or Idealism arguments (see Kastrup's writings as an example) and Gregg Rosenberg's argument that something very much like consciousness is needed as "carrier" for any causal interaction (a piece of which can legally be found here).

Now one doesn't have to take this route, there could be some other kind of carrier for causation, but [intentionality of all events] involves the only kind of "possibility selector" at the base causal level we have experience with - namely our own mental causation. And there's also the "top-down" delimiter to consider, namely the theistic arguments for God...

Great food for thought! (Though I haven't (yet) read those resources you've shared). I plan to get to this sort of thing in the contentions I'm (slowly but surely) putting to Paul.

There is nothing fine about it. It is not correct to say entangled particles are correlated. It's a ridiculous notion, you haven't measured them yet, they are still in a singlet state, so what the heck do you think you are correlating?

The quantum state of the particle configuration. Again:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02099178

If you'd rather use a different word, I'm open to proposals. We could use "entangled states."

This is such a fundamental part of Quantum Mechanics that to dispute that measurements of entangled pair particles are correlated, by suggesting that you know some information about these particles whilst they are entangled, and before they are measured, just shows you're a trying to force Quantum Mechanics to adopt your classical view of the world.

You don't appear to be reading my actual words. I never said we know any information about the particles when they are entangled. I have agreed that we do not know the spin, say, until it is measured. Multiple times I repeated my initial phrase "... just not specific values." I'm not sure why you are refusing to understand that I am agreeing with you.

I have no "classical view" of the world.

~~ Paul

5. "...an objective review of the (empirical) neuroscientific evidence unequivocally supports the existence of free will. The first neuroscientist to map the brains of conscious subjects, Wilder Penfield, noted that there is an immaterial power of volition in the human mind that he could not stimulate with electrodes. The pioneer in the neuroscience of free will was Benjamin Libet, who demonstrated clearly that, while there is an unconscious material predisposition to acts as shown by electrical brain activity, we retain an immaterial “free won’t,” which is the ability to veto an unconscious urge to act." (https://mindmatters.ai/2018/10/is-free-w...rous-myth/)

I don't think his experiments were definitive. Note, in particular the 5th paragraph of the Criticisms section of this Wiki article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will

And here is an interesting article:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scien...free-will/

~~ Paul

wtf

Paul - you better than most people - know that computers output "perfect" results because of error correction software.  Without that software fixing the signals through the circuits - many applications would be useless.

Note that I said "almost perfect." I think you are overestimating the number of errors that occur. Meanwhile, they are repaired in an entirely deterministic manner. And why does this matter? They are random errors.

~~ Paul

If we're talking epistemically, then yes. I'm talking metaphysically though. I'm suggesting that there is a set of laws which comprehensively describes the world (or that there would be such a set "by the end of time", if it were held that some laws did not become true until the time at which they apply - i.e., if the future is not in some sense "fixed" or "hypothetically knowable in advance").

Whether or not we can know what those laws are, and the extent to which we can know or approximate them, is an epistemological question.

Whether or not they exist in the first place is a metaphysical one.

Check out the Talbott paper - I'd say even if they exist without a God (I don't see how but assuming) they still run into issues even if one gets past the dualist interactionism.

Right. Could we frame this as a scientific question? Our null hypothesis would be that the laws hold by luck alone, in which case we could (theoretically, probably not practically) obtain a p-value for the extent to which we observe consistent laws which do not randomly change. I guess one problem might be that "random" laws need not be those which change within time but rather change in relation to the universe as a whole including all time.

Yeah, I think you can go this route but I don't think you can have a p-value. This would be a state of "Hyperchaos", where the randomness does not submit to any probability distribution (see this thread on materialism without fictional "laws"). Positional clouds for electrons and other things regarded as "random" b/c they are modeled scholastically are in fact a blend of Order and Chaos, perhaps why I have difficulty understanding the problem of finding something that is neither determined nor random. Everything that can be modeled by a probability distribution fits that bill.
Odd for people to act as if Anu and Tiamat never blended their waters. ;-)

Argh, I still haven't read that paper. What you say sounds reasonable though.

When you get a chance take a look. It helped me see how intellectually bankrupt the physicalist project really is.

Good question. It can't, on pain of infinite regression, be another law.

Yeah, it's very hard to actually come up with a real argument for laws being absolutely binding.

I was thinking along animistic lines - I haven't looked into Hoffman's views.

He suggests the interaction of free willed Minds is what brings about the rest of reality. He also has an Interface Perception Theory, wherein he says our perceptions of reality have been driven by survival not truth.

Right - something like this does seem to be necessary. Here's a question I'd be interested to get your take on: is the Ground (of Being) in this sense a part of Reality or apart from Reality (where by "Reality" I mean "everything")?

I think it depends on how one argues for the Ground (of Being). I'm more partial to the panentheistic takes, but a lot of what I've actually read on the subject relates to the writings of Aquinas where it seems the idea is God transcends all reality....but the God of Philosophers is such a strange entity it's hard to know what to make of it. Makes me recall Plotinus saying the One is not be worshiped, better to take one's petitions to the gods.

Great food for thought! (Though I haven't (yet) read those resources you've shared). I plan to get to this sort of thing in the contentions I'm (slowly but surely) putting to Paul.

Physicalism is a failure, not just in regards to Consciousness [and] Causation, but also in its inability to speak of relata. Hawkings' "fire" remains a ghost in the mathematical machinery. So Hard Problems of Consciousness, Causality, and even Matter.

All our discussions, I suspect, turn on this giant hole in the physicalist picture - What are the Things-in-Themselves that enter into the measured relations?

I'm reading what you said just fine... you said...

          "I think it's entirely fair to say that the entangled particles are correlated"

That's not fine... it's silly rubbish...

If you want to withdraw everything you have said previously about you having knowledge about the information of carefully prepared entangled particles, before they are measured, including the suggestion that you know they are correlated before measurement, that's fine with me.

Now you're simply refusing to read what I say, so what's the point of continuing? Why are you doing this?

I do not think that entangled particles have values of spin, etc., before they are measured. I do, however, think that it's fine to say that their quantum states are correlated, as do physicists. If they do not, then what does this article title mean?

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02099178

If their quantum states are not correlated, how would their spin values be correlated when measured?

~~ Paul