Neuroscience and free will

[Laird]

Indeed, I did not read the article recently. I'm focused primarily on the conversation with you. I'll worry about the meaning of meaning some other day.

(Meanwhile, it sounds like you could answer my questions.

I could, but it would be far more productive (for me) and reasonable (of you) for you to simply read the article...

[Laird]

Thanks for these recs!

More than welcome.

Sounds good to me.

Super! Do you want to start the page or shall I?

Yeah taking a first skim I can see I won't agree with the final idea of probabilistic intervention, but the fact it borrows so much from mental causation seems like a good start.

Let us know of any further reactions you develop as (if) you continue reading!

Hmmm...for my part I think the thread has covered that which I wanted to get out of the example. We've covered:

Actuality and Potentiality,
Efficient/External and Final/Inner Causes,
Effectiveness of the Brick and Receptivity of the Window & how this mirrors Phenomenal & Experiential aspects
Location of Final Causes as Effects of Efficient  Causes
Possibility Space and possibility selection,
the true poles of Inexorable Fate (no true counterfactuals) vs Hyperchaos (no possible probability distribution),
Unique Events are neither determined nor random,
Laws and their need for something within the entities to obey,
how Determinism/Randomness are projections of probabilistic confidence,
the "deterministic" causal arc of a "random" probabilistic position cloud corresponding to a single electron that's helping to constitute the thrown brick
...there's even a bit of Material & Formal cause that has been touched on.

Super. We've been pretty comprehensive so far then.

We could go further with the example, discuss the Brick Thrower as a conscious agent possessing Rationality / Subjectivity / Intentionality and what it means to experience a brick-as-a-brick & a window-as-a-window then rationally conclude that if one wants to shatter the window the brick is an appropriate part of the interest-relative causal sequence...

We could... and I guess that that would involve identifying the conclusion as relating to rationality, the experience as relating to subjectivity, and the "brick-as-a-brick & window-as-a-window" as relating to intentionality. Right?

It's definitely teleological...but I've not read enough of Whitehead to give you an exact answer...

OK, no worries, and thanks - that it is "teleological" is pretty much what I meant by "evolutionary" and thus answers my question.

Super! Do you want to start the page or shall I?

I think it might best for you to start with the GCDE...after that we may want to tease apart the related but not exactly synonymous terms Inner Cause, Final Cause, and Dispositional Cause. (Along with these we'd add the less contentious Efficient Cause)

We could... and I guess that that would involve identifying the conclusion as relating to rationality, the experience as relating to subjectivity, and the "brick-as-a-brick & window-as-a-window" as relating to intentionality. Right?

Yes, it seems to me that one can make a solid argument that all three aspects of Consciousness are happening at once as our mind "hooks" into the world. So you have Intentionality which Tallis describes as pointing in the opposite direction of physics' causal sequences, Subjectivity which via Gregg Rosenberg we've noted seems like a good candidate to serve as carrier for all causation, and Rationality which is our accessing of the Eternal Logical Universals.

It helps me, at least, see why the our taking in of the Real by Conscioiusness is the presentation of world as Possibility Space. IIRC it was Aquinas who said that in a sense the soul is All Things.

OK, no worries, and thanks - that it is "teleological" is pretty much what I meant by "evolutionary" and thus answers my question.

This excerpt from Whitehead's Religion in the Making may be of interest:

"The passage of time is the journey of the world towards the gathering of new ideas into actual fact. This adventure is upwards and downwards. Whatever ceases to ascend fails to preserve itself and enters upon its inevitable path of decay. It decays by transmitting its nature to slighter occasions of actuality, by reason of the failure of the new forms to fertilize the perceptive achievements which constitute its past history.

The universe shows us two aspects: on one side it is physically wasting. on the other side it is spiritually ascending. It is thus passing with a slowness. inconceivable in, our measures of time. to new creative conditions amid which the physical world. as we at present know it will be represented by a ripple barely to be distinguished from non-entity. The present type of order in the world has arisen from an unimaginable past, and it will find its grave in an unimaginable future.

There remains the inexhaustible realm of abstract forms. and creativity, with its shifting character ever determined afresh by its own creatures and God, upon whose wisdom all forms of order depends."

[Laird]

I think it might best for you to start with the GCDE...after that we may want to tease apart the related but not exactly synonymous terms Inner Cause, Final Cause, and Dispositional Cause. (Along with these we'd add the less contentious Efficient Cause)

OK...

Perhaps we should first clarify the exact purpose of the page. Here's my suggested title, which (I hope) accurately reflects the purpose I'd suggest for it:

"Free Will and Causality: Discussion Resources, Glossary, and Conceptual Summary and Synthesis".

Yes? No? Additions? Deletions? Other amendments?

Yes, it seems to me that one can make a solid argument that all three aspects of Consciousness are happening at once as our mind "hooks" into the world. So you have Intentionality which Tallis describes as pointing in the opposite direction of physics' causal sequences, Subjectivity which via Gregg Rosenberg we've noted seems like a good candidate to serve as carrier for all causation, and Rationality which is our accessing of the Eternal Logical Universals.

It helps me, at least, see why the our taking in of the Real by Conscioiusness is the presentation of world as Possibility Space. IIRC it was Aquinas who said that in a sense the soul is All Things.

Nice. An anticipatory thought/question comes out of that. Previously, you seem to have linked rationality with final causation; in the above you link it with eternal logical universals: a committed hard determinist might then insist that the eternal logical universals are "necessary", and thus that final causation is "necessitated", and thus that all decisions are "necessitated" rather than free. How would you respond to that?

This excerpt from Whitehead's Religion in the Making may be of interest:

"The passage of time is the journey of the world towards the gathering of new ideas into actual fact. This adventure is upwards and downwards. Whatever ceases to ascend fails to preserve itself and enters upon its inevitable path of decay. It decays by transmitting its nature to slighter occasions of actuality, by reason of the failure of the new forms to fertilize the perceptive achievements which constitute its past history.

The universe shows us two aspects: on one side it is physically wasting. on the other side it is spiritually ascending. It is thus passing with a slowness. inconceivable in, our measures of time. to new creative conditions amid which the physical world. as we at present know it will be represented by a ripple barely to be distinguished from non-entity. The present type of order in the world has arisen from an unimaginable past, and it will find its grave in an unimaginable future.

There remains the inexhaustible realm of abstract forms. and creativity, with its shifting character ever determined afresh by its own creatures and God, upon whose wisdom all forms of order depends."

Nice!

The idea of evolving towards a mere ripple of a physical world must be some kind a trip for the physicalist...

(By the way, I get the impression that you typed that out on a phone/pad from hard copy - am I guessing right?)

I'm not sure why you make this point because I haven't contended that they do.

What, in a nutshell, I have contended is this: that which you refer to as a "physical reason" is synonymous with that which we have otherwise been referring to as a "law". So, if "physical reasons" necessitate events, then that means that "laws" necessitate events, and thus that laws are not descriptive, but are instead prescriptive.

So, if you want to allow that events are necessitated, then you have to drop the claim that laws are descriptive. But at the same time you have to explain what it is (about the prescriptive laws) that necessitates the events. Typically, this is done by invoking God as the prescribing agent. But, as an atheist, that option is not open to you.


In virtue of the above (the synonymity of "law" and "physical reason"), this is a badly confused statement. It amounts to (substituting synonyms):

"If the laws are only descriptive, then they cannot prescribe that events do not happen in particular ways due to laws".

Which amounts to:

"If the laws are only descriptive, then they cannot prescribe that laws are not prescriptive".

Which amounts to:

"If laws are not prescriptive, then they cannot prescribe that laws are not prescriptive".

Which is... pretty meaningless, really. Sure, by definition, non-prescriptive laws can't prescribe anything, but that which you conditionally assert they could not prescribe just happens to be the case (by virtue of the antecedent of the conditional) anyway.

You are clearly very confused about all of this and I'm not quite sure how best to resolve your confusion. My best suggestion is for you to (re)read Prof. Swartz's Lecture Notes on Free Will and Determinism. Please let me know if/when you do that and whether or not it helped.


The fact (if it is a fact) of laws being descriptive doesn't "have power" over or "dictate" anything. It simply entails, by virtue of what "descriptive" means, that events are not necessitated.


So, to be clear:

You now recant your claim that laws are descriptive. You now claim that laws might or might not be descriptive, and that we (or at least you) cannot know whether they are or are not.

Correct?

I plan to answer your post in detail, but first I am doing some research on prescriptive versus descriptive laws. I think we have different definitions of them in mind.

~~ Paul

It's not relevant for the moment. You are challenging the possibility of free will, so for the moment we are interrogating the basis on which you've made that challenge, and whether/how your challenge can stand based on what you believe, and on what follows from your beliefs.

Sorry, I wasn't asking what you believe. I was asking whether you think that descriptive laws means there are no necessary events.

~~ Paul

I see. At issue is whether or not laws are the same thing as the underlying reason why specific events are produced. They are treated as different, by those who work with them. And I (and Paul, as far as I can tell) do so as well. There are good reasons to keep them separate. For one, unless a law is complete, it isn't identical to the reason anyways. For another, it helps prevent the idea that the laws impose upon events.

If we think of "laws" and "underlying reason" as synonymous, then we are talking about complete laws. And in this case the laws will be both descriptive and prescriptive. So the contention then becomes:

The events described by complete laws happen necessarily, or the events described by prescriptive laws happen necessarily.

Personally, I don't think we need to argue on the basis of differing definitions. Let's just drop the reference to laws, and refer to underlying reasons, instead. After all, it is the underlying reason which shows us whether the event is necessary (deterministic), not whether or not we have happened to formulate a "law" (complete or otherwise) to describe the underlying reason.

Linda

You are clearly very confused about all of this and I'm not quite sure how best to resolve your confusion. My best suggestion is for you to (re)read Prof. Swartz's Lecture Notes on Free Will and Determinism. Please let me know if/when you do that and whether or not it helped.


The fact (if it is a fact) of laws being descriptive doesn't "have power" over or "dictate" anything. It simply entails, by virtue of what "descriptive" means, that events are not necessitated.

So, I read sections 6.4--6.7 of the lecture notes:

http://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/freewill1.htm#versus

Interestingly, it says that prescriptive laws are violable, though I think that may pertain only to human laws. However, I see nothing that insists that when we adopt descriptive laws, this entails that the universe never does anything out of necessity.

Another interesting thing in that article is that section 6.8 seems to violate the statement in section 6.4 that descriptive laws contains no proper names. But anyway, that's a different matter.

Then I read the page "Laws of Nature" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Strangely, it never uses the word "prescriptive." I focused on section 8, "Necessity." It discusses the debate between necessitarians and non-necessitarians, but does not reach any conclusion about whether some physical events happen out of necessity.

I kept searching for relevant essays and papers. There are papers apparently arguing that there are natural laws that are metaphysically necessary:

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/063a/cf...fe87ce.pdf

There is much discussion about whether our talk of laws pertains only to our world or to all possible worlds. One argument is that we should assume that laws describing events don't happen out of necessity because there could be a logical world in which the law does not hold. If that is the view we are taking in this discussion, then I would tend to agree that descriptivism means that nothing happens out of necessity. I say "tend" because I think it's possible that we could have a law that describes events that must happen a certain way in all possible worlds.

So after about two hours of searching and reading, I don't find anything that convinces me that descriptivism entails that no events happen out of necessity. It simply means that we aren't embedding the laws in nature itself and thus endowing the laws with prescriptive causal power.

However, I stand by for additional reading suggestions.

~~ Paul

I cannot imagine life without DNA/RNA/Ribosome systems!!!!!!!

I just posted a quote by Marcello Barbieri  - Post 410 of this thread,

I always refer to DNA as a system with Ribosomes - due to reading the very paper you have just linked.  What in the world are you trying to communicate?  Have you read that paper which contradicts your comment about life without coded information structures?

????

You cannot imagine a life form that simple replicates by copying and has no equivalent of DNA? Interesting.

Anyway, I'm not sure what your point it. If you want to say that DNA encodes proteins (and other things), fine.

~~ Paul