Neuroscience and free will

Again, I await a proof of this apparently just-so claim about consciousness.

~~ Paul

But the claim I made isn't specifcally about consciousness, it's about trying to get any property/thing/etc from substances that the are insisted upon to lack it. The condition of no mental character in matter is a stipulation of the physicalist.

So we start with the base constituents that have no mental/semantic character, and somehow we will produce the mental character where neurons can be about Paris...while the base constituents will still lack this semantic meaning.

You started to sketch out a possible solution, with your idea about the photo-receptor device...I assume someone will reply as to whether they think that's a good direction...

But the claim I made isn't specifcally about consciousness, it's about trying to get any property/thing/etc from substances that the are insisted upon to lack it. The condition of no mental character in matter is a stipulation of the physicalist.

So we start with the base constituents that have no mental/semantic character, and somehow we will produce the mental character where neurons can be about Paris...while the base constituents will still lack this semantic meaning.

You started to sketch out a possible solution, with your idea about the photo-receptor device...I assume someone will reply as to whether they think that's a good direction...

I posted that little sketch because I'm quite sure human consciousness evolved, regardless of whether there are some mental properties of matter. I very much doubt that full-blown human consciousness is a fundamental property. But primarily I was asking what people mean by meaning and symbology.

I don't think we would say that physical substances have any computational properties, and yet we have computers.

~~ Paul

[Laird]

This is tricky.

Ah. Now you start to see the problem...

How do you mean "necessarily"?

For events to happen "necessarily" means that they "could not have" happened differently; that they "had to" happen that way.

Perhaps I'm misinterpreting "had to" in "those laws 'had to' happen the way that they did."

It's necessary events that we're concerned with, not necessary laws - but the former would seem to require the latter, and you have eliminated that possibility by subscribing to a descriptivist account of laws.

I agree that the mere existence of a descriptive law does not somehow oblige the universe to have event X always happen according to the description.

That sounds like agreement with the proposition at issue then.

Let's see if there's anything in the rest of your post that might prevent agreement:

However, I'm not sure why we would insist that the event cannot always happen as described.

But nobody is insisting on that nor even suggesting it.

I answered "Agreed" because I interpreted your statement this way:

Laird: If laws are descriptive (and not prescriptive) then it is not possible that the events described by those laws "had to" happen the way that they did, just because the law is possible to develop.

Those additions (italicised) implicitly contradict that which precedes them: the reason why it is not possible that the events "had to" happen the way that they did is because the laws are descriptive and not prescriptive. To tack onto the contention then that it is "just because the law is possible to develop" is to obfuscate the fact that it is because the laws are not prescriptive (because they are, in fact, descriptive). So, the additions are misleading and have no place here.

It is possible that there is are operative physical processes that can only have event X occur the way it happens to be described by the law.

But any such physical processes would themselves be described by laws, right? And those laws would themselves be descriptive and not prescriptive, because those are the only type of laws you hold to exist, right? So, whatever prescriptiveness you might think you can grab hold of here ultimately dissolves into (mere) descriptiveness, right?

(2) The fact that laws are descriptive does not mean that they cannot turn out to describe a set of events that only occur as described by the the law.

There's that tautology again...

"Only occurring as described by a description [which is what a descriptive law is]" is simply what it means to be described by a description. Again - and again, and again, and again - this tautology says nothing meaningful and therefore whatever argument you might think you're contributing to with it isn't - can't be - supported by it.

Too, it is not even framed in terms of necessitation or prescriptiveness anyway: that would have involved a wording like "that must occur as described by the law" or "that can only occur as described by the law" - but you used instead the descriptive phrasing: "that only [do] occur as described by the law".

So, no, there doesn't seem to be anything preventing your agreement. Thus, I put the proposition, which follows from previous propositions to which you have agreed, to you again:

The events described by laws do not happen necessarily.

Agreed?

[Laird]

I suspect you agreed too readily.

No, Paul was right to agree. The proposition follows from the meaning of the terms it contains.

A false dichotomy was introduced.

Rather, a false dichotomy is in the process of being dispelled.

Events which happen necessaily, do not do so because of “prescriptive laws”. That is, there aren’t prescriptive (necessary) laws and descriptive laws.

Redefining terms when the actual definitions become inconvenient is a dishonest tactic.

{I}t may be reasonable to call the description of necessary events a “prescriptive” law, under some circumstances

Yeah, the circumstances in which 1=1.

[Laird]

This is some great synthesising! Nice work!

Just to note, to me the gap filler can be called inner cause, final cause, or even dispositional cause. But what I like about the term Final Cause is its use in relevant philosophy like Whitehead's.

For him efficient cause is the drawing in of the external, and final cause is the possibility selection centered in the relevant entity. It fits nicely with Sartre's "Freedom is what you do with what is done to you". I suspect many mistake free will as an expression of efficient cause, essentially a "self-moving" soul divorced from causal chains...that way lies madness because how are your decisions in context to your world? Free will is, rather, the *effect* of the efficient causes that lead you to the Possibility Space where a decision - an application of final cause - needs to be made.

The above is why Whitehead says that the Actual Occasion, the "agent" in our terms being a succession of these "drops of experience", in some sense fossilizes - and thus becomes among the efficient causes for the agent in the Now. To quote Sydney Hooper (by way of Peter Sjöstedt):

"With the attainment of an actual entity's "satisfaction" the immediacy of final causation is lost, the subject perishes, and the actual entity passes into the state of "objective immortality" in virtue of which efficient causality arises.' "

All to say your own expression of final causes in the Present can/will be an efficient cause in the subsequent Now.

All very interesting. A thought/question by way of acknowledging/appreciating the insight you've just shared (though it might come across as mere pedantry!):

"Final causation" is more technically a type of "explanation" rather than a type of "cause" in the more limited sense in which we understand "causality" in modern terms, right? That is, it explains the intent or purpose of that which eventuates, rather than the "how" of the eventuation - fair enough? So, for "final causation" to be effectual, it has to be "implemented" by... well, efficient causation. So, in a way, we could say that rather than the efficient cause being transformed-into, in "the subsequent Now", from a final cause as that final cause "fossilises", it was all along an efficient cause that was necessary to "do what it took to achieve the final cause", even if once that "necessary task" was complete, and the agent is "satisfied", the final cause "retires" (is fossilised).

Again, that's far more trying to demonstrate that I understand and very much appreciate what you're saying than to pick a bone with it, even though the former has been seemingly effected via the latter!

That said, dispositional causes do make certain sense on the efficient and final sides, as noted by our friends Mumford & Anjum:

It seems to me that here they speak of the Efficient Cause not being a necessary binder but rather a disposition

Having thought about it, I'm now much more comfortable with the notion of dispositional causes than I initially was. Here's how I've reconciled with the idea:

Take the "law" of gravity. This might seem to be as incontrovertible and "absolute" (i.e., non-dispositional) a law as there is: an object with mass in the presence of another object with mass will draw closer to that other object with a force which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers (adapted from Wikipedia).

But what if the objects are both negatively charged? Then there will be an opposing force. So, the "law" of gravity is not "absolute", but contingent on there being no other "absolute" laws which "indispose" it. Of course, one can generalise those two apparently "indisposed" laws into a singular law which is more "absolute", based on summations of forces due to the individual laws - that is, that one of these "absolute" laws is contingent upon the (extent of the) application of the other; that they should in a sense be considered to be conjunctions rather than individually absolute... but this is basically what "dispositional" causality means anyway, at least as I understand it.

As applied to free will choices, this sort of "dispositionality" would mean that laws such as gravity and electromagnetism would be in conjunction with those "laws" (really GCDEs) effected by free-willing agents.

Does that jibe at all with your understanding?

, what I call the External Cause that leads the agent to a new Possibility Space, a "superposition" for consciousness where a decision needs to be made.

And here the disposition is in reference to Final Cause, the inner causal power of the entity.

I'd contend our causation buddies are trying to speak of Dispositional Causation as one type of cause driving all change, but it seems better to split this into Efficient and Final causation. Admittedly this stuff gets a bit complex, even if one started from a brick going through a window...

Nice. I see a brick going through the window of physicalism...

[Laird]

You started to sketch out a possible solution, with your idea about the photo-receptor device...I assume someone will reply as to whether they think that's a good direction...

"Someone" reporting in for a reply...

Here's what Paul wrote:

It depends to a great degree on how you define meaning. If a simple organism can detect light, is it fair to say that the light detection apparatus has the meaning "light in that direction"? Or do you require that it be able to somehow state the meaning of X without actually experiencing/doing X? Does the meaning have to be symbolic? If so, let's say that organism also has a simple neural mechanism that can act like a latch: When the light detection apparatus detects light, the latch is set and lasts in that state for 1 minute. Does the latch represent the light symbolically?

Paul, apparently you did not even read the original article, Popper contra computationalism, to which Sci linked, because it addressed this sort of thing in making the distinction between the "expressive function" aka the "natural meaning" of language, the "signaling function" aka the "functional meaning" of language, and then the two functions which formed the basis of its argument, the "descriptive" and "argumentative" functions of language.

It seems that you haven't done your homework...

This is some great synthesising! Nice work!

All very interesting. A thought/question by way of acknowledging/appreciating the insight you've just shared (though it might come across as mere pedantry!):

"Final causation" is more technically a type of "explanation" rather than a type of "cause" in the more limited sense in which we understand "causality" in modern terms, right? That is, it explains the intent or purpose of that which eventuates, rather than the "how" of the eventuation - fair enough? So, for "final causation" to be effectual, it has to be "implemented" by... well, efficient causation. So, in a way, we could say that rather than the efficient cause being transformed-into, in "the subsequent Now", from a final cause as that final cause "fossilises", it was all along an efficient cause that was necessary to "do what it took to achieve the final cause", even if once that "necessary task" was complete, and the agent is "satisfied", the final cause "retires" (is fossilised).

Personally I'm wary of trying to cash out Final causes into Efficient causes...at least how I am thinking of Final Cause which [may] not be congruent to others' usage...gonna try to clarify so now I must apologize for possible upcoming pendantry!  

I think the "Efficient Causes Only" picture leaves the gap in causal explanation where, in the explanation of why something happened, we need to explain why something else didn't happen. To me Final cause is synonymous with the determination of a particular possibility out of all potential states, like Penrose's remarking on the "decision" which ends superposition. To me every event has the set of possible outcomes out of which one is selected, and I'd contend everyone sees this same need to lock down the outcomes otherwise there'd be no talk of Natural Laws.

All to say IMO Inner/Final Cause is the answer to Gregg Rosenberg's question about causation, "Why this One Thing rather than Everything?"
If there were only Efficient Causes, it seems to me the determination of why things are the way they are goes back to the Laws and their attendant problems that ultimately bring us back to the reality - as per our favorite Talbott essay Do Physical Laws Make Things Happen - that the governed entities themselves must have something within them that makes them law abiding. That "something within them", to me, is Final/Inner Cause.

That said, I'd agree that Final/Inner causation follows from Efficient/Outer causation, just as the stochastic position cloud of an electron (Inner Cause) constituting a ball is determined by the arc of my throw (Outer Cause). 

My thinking on the "fossilization" is of the entire Actual Occasion rather than a final cause unto itself, apologies if that wasn't clear. If we think of final causes as decisions, the idea is that your past decisions - in tandem with the consequences of those decisions - determine the new Possibility Space of the Now. 

I think this Whiteheadian+Sartre picture is the right one, placing free will as power over the effect rather than power over causality. The Libertarian goal of defying causation only exacerbated the "Misplaced Concreteness" of reifying the mathematical modeling of events, which led to the Sisyphean Task of needlessly trying to carve out a place between Determinism and Randomness as if they existed in nature.

Additionally with the proper kind of Efficient/Outer and Final/Inner causation introduced, there's the ready analogy of the electron with its stochastic position cloud helping to make up a thrown ball. As I've said before, we can even consider a qualitative "stochastic variable" to represent a person's character (dare I say "disposition"?) so even externally we now have a predictive modeling of decision making that is - as per Mumford & Anjum - neither absolutely necessary nor absolutely contingent.

Maybe it is better to speak of External Causes and Inner Causes, but I suspect the complete picture of how we "hook into" the world will draw upon Material & Formal causation before the end so I wanted to keep the terms Efficient & Final.

Again, that's far more trying to demonstrate that I understand and very much appreciate what you're saying than to pick a bone with it, even though the former has been seemingly effected via the latter!

Yeah I think the issue may be "Final Cause" has a lot of teleological baggage attached to it where events move toward some God/Fate-determined goal. My point isn't to claim "What Comes After Determines What Comes Before",  rather simply that for anything possible to happen you have a set of events that have contextualized the Possibility Space - the Efficient Causes - and then the new event comes about due to a selection from that space - the Final Cause. 

[Also Whitehead uses "entity" for something perishing with each Possibility Selection and I think of an entity in the same way I think of an agent, something that survives numerous such selections....I should straighten out the language usage...apologies...]

Having thought about it, I'm now much more comfortable with the notion of dispositional causes than I initially was. Here's how I've reconciled with the idea:

Take the "law" of gravity. This might seem to be as incontrovertible and "absolute" (i.e., non-dispositional) a law as there is: an object with mass in the presence of another object with mass will draw closer to that other object with a force which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers (adapted from Wikipedia).

But what if the objects are both negatively charged? Then there will be an opposing force. So, the "law" of gravity is not "absolute", but contingent on there being no other "absolute" laws which "indispose" it. Of course, one can generalise those two apparently "indisposed" laws into a singular law which is more "absolute", based on summations of forces due to the individual laws - that is, that one of these "absolute" laws is contingent upon the (extent of the) application of the other; that they should in a sense be considered to be conjunctions rather than individually absolute... but this is basically what "dispositional" causality means anyway, at least as I understand it.

As applied to free will choices, this sort of "dispositionality" would mean that laws such as gravity and electromagnetism would be in conjunction with those "laws" (really GCDEs) effected by free-willing agents.

Does that jibe at all with your understanding?

Yeah this is how I would see it. No singled out cause has the power of Fate behind it, it is subject to counterfactual analysis. This doesn't, however, IMO do enough to prevent the conclusion that a total summation of Outer causes without any interest-relative framing necessitates the event. OTOH, one could argue that if no single cause is inexorably binding, what makes the total set of causes binding?

If there was only Efficient Cause it seems to me the response would be how could the total set not be binding, given we observe change happening? (Though analysis would still suggest the explanatory gap.)

So it's also here that I think Mumford and Amjun err in trying to take this same concept of dispositional causation and apply it to indeterminate events which being "random" in the sense of being stochastic suggest Disposition is used in a different way, closer (at least in analogy) to our own mental causation.

They're conflating the Outer set of causes "impacting" an entity thus putting the entity into a new Possibility Space, and the Inner causal power/property that selects a possibility...which then becomes part of the "impact" determining the next Possibility Space in the subsequent Now....

Nice. I see a brick going through the window of physicalism...

[Laird]

Personally I'm wary of trying to cash out Final causes into Efficient causes...at least how I am thinking of Final Cause which [may] not be congruent to others' usage...gonna try to clarify so now I must apologize for possible upcoming pendantry!

I think the "Efficient Causes Only" picture leaves the gap in causal explanation where, in the explanation of why something happened, we need to explain why something else didn't happen. To me Final cause is synonymous with the determination of a particular possibility out of all potential states, like Penrose's remarking on the "decision" which ends superposition. To me every event has the set of possible outcomes out of which one is selected, and I'd contend everyone sees this same need to lock down the outcomes otherwise there'd be no talk of Natural Laws.

All to say IMO Inner/Final Cause is the answer to Gregg Rosenberg's question about causation, "Why this One Thing rather than Everything?"
If there were only Efficient Causes, it seems to me the determination of why things are the way they are goes back to the Laws and their attendant problems that ultimately bring us back to the reality - as per Talbott's essay - that the governed entities themselves must have something within them that makes them law abiding. That "something within them", to me, is Final/Inner Cause.

I think I see what you're saying, although in light of what you write below, I might be misframing it. "Final causation" is "that which 'selects' which of the potential GCDEs (and the more specifically 'natural/physical laws') applies in actuality". If it weren't for final causation, we would not be able to say why the given GCDE applies as opposed to some other GCDE which is a logical possibility. "Efficient causation" alone can at best describe "that which happens (causally) under the given GCDE", not why that given GCDE applies and hence why that particular thing happens (which it does under that particular GCDE).

Am I reading you aright?

That said, I'd agree that Final/Inner causation follows from Efficient/Outer causation, just as the stochastic position cloud of an electron (Inner Cause) constituting a ball is determined by the arc of my throw (Outer Cause).

My thinking on the "fossilization" is of the entire Actual Occasion rather than a final cause unto itself, apologies if that wasn't clear. If we think of final causes as decisions, the idea is that your past decisions - in tandem with the consequences of those decisions - determine the new Possibility Space of the Now.

I think I get you. Efficient/outer causation set the circumstances under and within which final/inner causation freely select the outcome... which then in turn contributes to the setting of the next set of circumstances under and within which the free decision which is "selection of an outcome by final/inner causation" is made. (And final/inner causation is by definition a function of a conscious agent). Right?

I think this Whiteheadian+Sartre picture is the right one, placing free will as power over the effect rather than power over causality. The Libertarian goal of defying causation only exacerbated the "Misplaced Concreteness" of reifying the mathematical modeling of events.

This is the bit that I hope doesn't mean I misframed things above. It (the lack of power over causality) could be interpreted as disqualifying my framing that final causation 'selects' which of the potential GCDEs applies in actuality. I don't think it does, but I'm just raising it as a possibility.

Additionally with the proper kind of Efficient/Outer and Final/Inner causation introduced, there's the ready analogy of the electron with its stochastic position cloud helping to make up a thrown ball. As I've said before, we can even consider a qualitative "stochastic variable" to represent a person's character (dare I say "disposition"?) so even externally we now have a predictive modeling of decision making that is - as per Mumford & Anjum - neither absolutely necessary nor absolutely contingent.

Maybe it is better to speak of External Causes and Inner Causes, but I suspect the complete picture of how we "hook into" the world will draw upon Material & Formal causation before the end so I wanted to keep the terms Efficient & Final.

Fair enough. I'll just flag that with "predictive modeling" we move from metaphysics/ontology to epistemology. and I think it's useful to maintain a clear distinction.

Yeah I think the issue may be "Final Cause" has a lot of teleological baggage attached to it where events move toward some God/Fate-determined goal. My point isn't to claim "What Comes After Determines What Comes Before", rather simply that for anything possible to happen you have a set of events that have contextualized the Possibility Space - the Efficient Causes - and then the new event comes about due to a selection from that space - the Final Cause.

[Also Whitehead uses "entity" for something perishing with each Possibility Selection and I think of an entity in the same way I think of an agent, something that survives numerous such selections....I should straighten out the language usage...apologies...]

That all makes sense to me.

Yeah this is how I would see it. No singled out cause has the power of Fate behind it, it is subject to counterfactual analysis. This doesn't, however, IMO do enough to prevent the conclusion that a total summation of Outer causes without any interest-relative framing necessitates the event. OTOH, one could argue that if no single cause is inexorably binding, what makes the total set of causes binding?

If there was only Efficient Cause it seems to me the response would be how could the total set not be binding, given we observe change happening? (Though analysis would still suggest the explanatory gap.)

Agreed! Especially with the bits I've emboldened.

So it's also here that I think Mumford and Amjun err in trying to take this same concept of dispositional causation and apply it to indeterminate events which being "random" in the sense of being stochastic suggest Disposition is used in a different way, closer (at least in analogy) to our own mental causation.

They're conflating the Outer set of causes "impacting" an entity thus putting the entity into a new Possibility Space, and the Inner causal power/property that selects a possibility...which then becomes part of the "impact" determining the next Possibility Space in the subsequent Now....

Right. There has to be an original contribution from within for free will to be meaningful (versus merely "compatibilistic").

I think I see what you're saying, although in light of what you write below, I might be misframing it. "Final causation" is "that which 'selects' which of the potential GCDEs (and the more specifically 'natural/physical laws') applies in actuality". If it weren't for final causation, we would not be able to say why the given GCDE applies as opposed to some other GCDE which is a logical possibility. "Efficient causation" alone can at best describe "that which happens (causally) under the given GCDE", not why that given GCDE applies and hence why that particular thing happens (which it does under that particular GCDE).

Am I reading you aright?

I...think so. Admittedly I am a bit shaky on GCDEs but it seems that we are on the same page or at least close. Where I get a bit confused is:

"Efficient causation" alone can at best describe "that which happens (causally) under the given GCDE", not why that given GCDE applies and hence why that particular thing happens (which it does under that particular GCDE).

It seems to me that GCDEs, as you use them, are meant to be stand-ins for laws even if these are laws for a Unique Event? Is the goal here to use the same terminology for free decisions as for the incredible "clockwork" of certain natural phenomena?

I can see GCDE having more explanatory value than the terms I've been using...sometimes new vocabulary can bring clarity to the picture.

I think I get you. Efficient/outer causation set the circumstances under and within which final/inner causation freely select the outcome... which then in turn contributes to the setting of the next set of circumstances under and within which the free decision which is "selection of an outcome by final/inner causation" is made. (And final/inner causation is by definition a function of a conscious agent). Right?

100% right on the bold, in that this was what I was hoping to convey.

Whether non-conscious objects progressing through time can be modeled this way...I'd say yes but their possibilities would need some binding right?...I suspect by a conscious entity (God(s)? Angels? Djinn? Kami?)...

This is the bit that I hope doesn't mean I misframed things above. It (the lack of power over causality) could be interpreted as disqualifying my framing that final causation 'selects' which of the potential GCDEs applies in actuality. I don't think it does, but I'm just raising it as a possibility.

By "power over causality" I just mean that Libertarians look to find an agent that can make relevant  a chain of Efficient Causes [s/he/it] participates in but also act as a cause unto themselves, divorced from the causal network which leads to frustrating failures as it's difficult to conceive what such an entity would be like.

Whitehead's idea of causation divided into External/Efficient and Internal/Final stages gives us a means of having the past be relevant but not completely binding in the causal sequence, while Sartre's idea shows us where a meaningful free action/effect ("what you do" aka Inner Cause) can take place ("with what's done to you" aka External Cause). And the Possibility Space is Tallis' conception of carving the world via Intentionality to grasp past, present, & potential future states...at some point we'll probably need to say more about each aspect of consciousness -> Subjectivity / Intentionality / Rationality...

The tricky part is that "what's done to you" in the Now includes the decisions ("what you did") in the past...where all that stuff about fossilization comes in. So in each Now the agent is in a new Possibility Space where the decision made in the Present determines what the effect of the past was and what the Possibility Space of the subsequent Now will be. There's probably better language for this process that is closer to layman terms...


Really this is just all a different way of stating Whitehead's metaphysics, ideally bringing clarity by using language from other authors.

Fair enough. I'll just flag that with "predictive modeling" we move from metaphysics/ontology to epistemology. and I think it's useful to maintain a clear distinction.

Yeah we'll see, we may not need the last two of Aristotle's Four Causes but I suspect the question of how we interrelate with the world can be aided by them...

Right. There has to be an original contribution from within for free will to be meaningful (versus merely "compatibilistic").

And that original contribution fills in the explanatory gap. This also makes things easier because then while free will is special in the sense of belonging to concious agents, it is not something that needs to work in complete defiance of the rest of causality.

[Laird]

I...think so. Admittedly I am a bit shaky on GCDEs but it seems that we are on the same page or at least close. Where I get a bit confused is:

"Efficient causation" alone can at best describe "that which happens (causally) under the given GCDE", not why that given GCDE applies and hence why that particular thing happens (which it does under that particular GCDE).

It seems to me that GCDEs, as you use them, are meant to be stand-ins for laws even if these are laws for a Unique Event?

Yes. Quite right.

Is the goal here to use the same terminology for free decisions as for the incredible "clockwork" of certain natural phenomena?

Yes, exactly. It brings both under the same umbrella. Note though that this goal is set in the context of a discussion with a physicalist, borrowing the conceptual framework of another physicalist or at least atheist (Prof. Swartz), with the higher goal of demonstrating why/how free will is viable/unproblematic even under physicalist assumptions (which Prof. Swartz affirms) - at least, to the extent that it is or can be manhandled into being.

Thus, in this framework, GCDEs are merely descriptive (and hence not prescriptive) - from which follow certain... uncomfortable... consequences for the physicalist (but which are not uncomfortable for Prof. Swartz, who embraces them). Those consequences are slowly becoming apparent in this thread...

I can see GCDE having more explanatory value than the terms I've been using...sometimes new vocabulary can bring clarity to the picture.

Yes, I think so. I think it is useful under both physicalism and the consciousness-based causation paradigm for which you are advocating to dissolve the distinction between those "conditional 'laws'" whose conditions pick out many (or all) events and those which pick out only one: in both cases the distinction is unjustified - in the case of physicalism because nothing necessitates the events in either case, and in the case of consciousness-based causation because the same fundamental ontological agent (consciousness) 'selects' events (/GCDEs) in both cases.

Under other paradigms which are less... "causally monistic" I guess is the word... it might be less useful to blur this distinction.

100% right on the bold, in that this was what I was hoping to convey.

Whether non-conscious objects progressing through time can be modeled this way...I'd say yes but their possibilities would need some binding right?...I suspect by a conscious entity (God(s)? Angels? Djinn? Kami?)...

As I've acknowledged throughout this thread: yes, it's hard to imagine what else could bind them, but then, we philosophising humans are not always known for the infallibility of our imaginations. Just ask Quentin Meillassoux about Immanuel Kant...

By "power over causality" I just mean that Libertarians look to find an agent that can make relevant a chain of Efficient Causes [s/he/it] participates in but also act as a cause unto themselves, divorced from the causal network which leads to frustrating failures as it's difficult to conceive what such an entity would be like.

But is that really any different than that which you're proposing and I'm supporting in this exchange? I mean, couldn't "acting as a cause unto themselves at the same time as making relevant a chain of efficient causes" be reasonably interpreted as that which we've "alternatively" suggested: supplying an original inner/final cause, which 'fossilises' into an efficient cause, from out of their own beings?

I'm open to the idea that it is different, but perhaps you can elaborate further as to how/why.

To elaborate on the difficulty I'm having, nothing in the following quote seems to contradict the potential I see for the libertarian perspective to be compatible with however you'd label the one you're advancing:

Whitehead's idea of causation divided into External/Efficient and Internal/Final stages gives us a means of having the past be relevant but not completely binding in the causal sequence, while Sartre's idea shows us where a meaningful free action/effect ("what you do" aka Inner Cause) can take place ("with what's done to you" aka External Cause). And the Possibility Space is Tallis' conception of carving the world via Intentionality to grasp past, present, & potential future states...at some point we'll probably need to say more about each aspect of consciousness -> Subjectivity / Intentionality / Rationality...

I agree though: it would (will, I hope!) be very useful to compare, contrast, and explore subjectivity, intentionality, and rationality.

The tricky part is that "what's done to you" in the Now includes the decisions ("what you did") in the past...where all that stuff about fossilization comes in. So in each Now the agent is in a new Possibility Space where the decision made in the Present determines what the effect of the past was and what the Possibility Space of the subsequent Now will be. There's probably better language for this process that is closer to layman terms...

Re that which I've emboldened: I really like this. Maybe I'm becoming a little rhetorically audacious, but... it suggests "an eternal unfolding" or a "perpetual self-actualisation" - there is a sense of recursion there: past choices are not definitive but rather feed into an ongoing process in which the self reveals itself - or rather becomes itself.

Really this is just all a different way of stating Whitehead's metaphysics, ideally bringing clarity by using language from other authors.

That's the joy of good and genuine ideas - you find them mirrored in different words by different people.

Yeah we'll see, we may not need the last two of Aristotle's Four Causes but I suspect the question of how we interrelate with the world can be aided by them...

Oh, my comment was specifically and solely related to the adjective "predictive" in "predictive modeling". I was simply flagging (amenability to) "predictability" as taking us out of the metaphysics and ontology of causation and into its epistemology. I wasn't intending to detract from your idea of "neither absolutely necessary nor absolutely contingent", nor of your suspicion that our complete picture will draw upon material and formal causation, all of which is purely metaphysical/ontological and does not depend on epistemology. I just think that it's helpful to separate out issues of metaphysics/ontology from those of epistemology.

And that original contribution fills in the explanatory gap. This also makes things easier because then while free will is special in the sense of belonging to concious agents, it is not something that needs to work in complete defiance of the rest of causality.

Nicely put.