Neuroscience and free will

[Laird]

I'd maybe just have a page on causality, rather than mentioning free will there? The two topics are interrelated but I think it might be best to first treat with causation to show the explanatory gaps of the physicalist picture.

OK. I understand that you want to include laws or at least GCDEs, so, should they (laws) be referenced in the title too, or do you think they're implicit enough in "causality"?

I don't think rationality necessarily involves final causes?

OK, and it looks like you're saying that to the extent that it is the other way around - that final causes necessarily involve rationality - the rationality involved need only be "bed-rock" and thus isn't such as to "necessitate" our "selection from the possibility space".

Yeah, had to type it out, apologies for any mistakes!

That's OK, and if my selection from the possibility space was rude, then I apologise in turn.

[Laird]

I was asking whether you think that descriptive laws means there are no necessary events.

In that case the answer is "Yes".

OK. I understand that you want to include laws or at least GCDEs, so, should they (laws) be referenced in the title too, or do you think they're implicit enough in "causality"?

I'd go with Causality for now. Discussions of causality, IMO, bear fruit while discussions about Free Will become hopelessly lost. I'd include GCDEs & Laws but I think they are covered by Causality as a title?

OK, and it looks like you're saying that to the extent that it is the other way around - that final causes necessarily involve rationality - the rationality involved need only be "bed-rock" and thus isn't such as to "necessitate" our "selection from the possibility space".

Yeah it seems applied rationality has to involve apprehension of natural ends and natures, in order to make rational selections from a possibility space. So awareness both efficient and final causes.

There's something very interesting about the Subjectivity / Rationality / Intentionality aspects of Consciousness wrt the Possibility Space. They combine to give us the Real  as something an agent has some influence over. We feel confidence of our causal power in some instances, while in others we lack that "confidence qualia" - this informs, to an extent, what it is to be Rational.

But then Rationality about the world also requires (perhaps obviously) Intentionality, as we need to carve up the world and have concepts/references to objects. This gets back the interest-relativity of causation, and Tallis' idea that causation is "because"-ation in that without minds there would simply be the entirety of the Real shifting from one state to the next. Yet this "because-ation" is, because of its interest-relativity, incredible powerful in that it allows us to make machines. As Dupre noted in that old essay machinery is a testament to our causal power, rather than something to analogize as to why we lack it.

Yet this interest-relativity doesn't preclude a physicalist picture for most things given to obtain the shift of the Real in total one could arguably add up the supposed underlying atomic/energetic/force-based causes in theory...save you can't do that for Intentionality as to have a thought about a cup you need to explain that specific causal chain from (world w/ cup) -> sense organs -> (thought about the cup).

Yet interest-relative causation is the very thing that Intentionality gives us so it comes before any application of interest-relative causation (that would include science experiments). Very curious...

That's OK, and if my selection from the possibility space was rude, then I apologise in turn.

Ah no worries, I figured it was a bit of fun!

[Laird]

I'd go with Causality for now. Discussions of causality, IMO, bear fruit while discussions about Free Will become hopelessly lost. I'd include GCDEs & Laws but I think they are covered by Causality as a title?

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

Or is that too wordy? Are you suggesting a title of the single word, "Causality"?

Honestly, I'd be very happy for you to create this article as you seem to have a better idea of that in which it should consist than I have.

Yet this interest-relativity doesn't preclude a physicalist picture for most things given to obtain the shift of the Real in total one could arguably add up the supposed underlying atomic/energetic/force-based causes in theory...save you can't do that for Intentionality as to have a thought about a cup you need to explain that specific causal chain from (world w/ cup) -> sense organs -> (thought about the cup).

Yet interest-relative causation is the very thing that Intentionality gives us so it comes before any application of interest-relative causation (that would include science experiments). Very curious...

For the moment, you've lost me with this, but maybe with some pondering I'll understand what you're trying to say.

This is a good suggestion. We can begin by deciding whether there are any physical events that must happen the way they do, due to the preceding state of affairs. If Laird insists that there are not, then we will understand what he wants us to agree with. I won't be able to agree, because how the hell should I know? I think there are events that happen out of necessity, but I can't be sure.

But I will agree that not all events must happen they way they do. Is that a sufficient crack in the wall?

~~ Paul

What I struggle with is that there does not seem to be a natural divide between descriptions which do or do not involve necessity. 

For example, a description of the movement of the heavenly bodies is superseded by a description of the attraction between bodies with mass. Even though Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation is descriptive only, it does make our previous descriptions (of the movement of the heavenly bodies) ones of necessity. When General Relativity came along, while it is also descriptive, it makes our description of Universal Gravitation a necessity. And the draw of String Theory is that, depending upon the shape of the n-dimensional space in which we find ourselves (which could only be descriptive), everything else, from the kinds of subatomic particles we find, to General Relativity, becomes a necessity. 

I agree with you - I think there are events that happen out of necessity, but I can't be sure. However, if Quantum Mechanics is a complete description, then the events which follow from it are necessary.

It doesn't make sense to me to say that necessities require an enforcer. I feel like that says more about our inability to shed our folk intuitions, than it does about the world.

Linda

[Laird]

What I struggle with is that there does not seem to be a natural divide between descriptions which do or do not involve necessity.

You'd be better advised to struggle instead with the problem that especially on an atheistic worldview there is no necessity in the empirical world, only contingency. Without some sort of "Necessary Ground of Being", available to the theist, there is nothing in which to ground empirical necessity, and since contingent empirical facts and states of affairs can only lead to other contingent empirical facts and states of affairs, never to necessary ones, all empirical facts and states of affair remain contingent. Witness:

Even though Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation is descriptive only, it does make our previous descriptions (of the movement of the heavenly bodies) ones of necessity.

Since Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation is itself contingent (and not necessary), then so are the movements of the heavenly bodies which it describes. The only "necessity" is semantic - one of relation - not metaphysical, and the mere necessity of a semantic relationship doesn't at all help Paul's (and your) case. That is to say that, semantically, i.e., given what the Law means, it is necessarily the case that if Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation is true, then the heavenly bodies move in a certain way - but the necessity of this semantic relationship doesn't confer necessity to either of the related items, and nor is it even the relevant (i.e., metaphysical) sense in which your debating position requires those movements to be "necessary"... so, this observation of yours is not helpful.

Then I can only encourage you to (re)read the notes in full. This is pretty much their entire point, Paul. It's fine if you want to present a counter-argument, but it's not fine for you to fail to recognise the argument in the first place.

Wouldn't it be easier if you simply the quoted the parts that state that the definition of descriptive laws entails that no events can happen out of necessity?

I think you're mistaken here. I assume you're referring to "D₄₇₂₉" and "D₅₃₂₂", but there are no proper names in those descriptions, simply because the descriptions are only alluded to. You seem to be assuming that the actual descriptions which are alluded to would require proper names, but I have shown you via examples of my own devising that this is not the case (see the example "Descriptive law"s I offered under 2.1 and 2.2 in this post).

The examples of descriptive laws that you give in that post are not specific to a single event, even though they are supposed to be describing a single event. I agree that you can probably include enough ordinal numbers and other identifiers to narrow it down, but then we have laws based on the entire history of the universe. I suppose you might call those "laws," but I would tend to call them "scripts."

My view is that this is not merely a "primary worry" but a fatality (especially re the bit I've emboldened). Is your view different? If so, then why? How do you justify that different view?

I'm just discussing the meaning of prescriptive and descriptive laws.

So, naturally, because you

(1) are keen to, so far as possible, work out for yourself what is true, and
(2) recognise as fallacious the argument that "some philosopher once published a paper arguing that X is true, therefore it is possible that X is true"

you enthusiastically devoured the paper, analysed its arguments, and came to a conclusion as to whether or not they were sound (and even cogent).

Please, then, go ahead and share with us that conclusion and how/why you reached it.

I didn't read the paper at all. But I'm glad it afforded you the opportunity to give me some more condescending crap.

Justify the statement I've emboldened. Explain or describe how this is (or could be) possible.

That "it's possible that we could have a law that describes events that must happen a certain way in all possible worlds"? Because there may be events that follow logically and inexorably from their precursors and logic holds in all possible worlds. How can we possibly know that there are no such events?

My contention is that if laws don't have prescriptive causal power, then events are not (cannot be, in virtue of what laws mean) necessitated. Reading can only affect that contention to the extent that it supplies new definitions or meanings for "descriptive", "prescriptive", "law", and "necessitated" - but then we'd be talking about something different than we have been...

I disagree. I think you are endowing the choice between prescriptive and descriptive laws with power that it does not have. We can't say "I don't think there are any events that happen out of necessity" and then assign a name to this idea and then argue that since the name means "laws just describe events" therefore there are no events that happen out of necessity. This appears to be the argument.

Now, if we want to invent the term "Descriptive Model of the Universe" (caps) and define it to mean that there are no events that happen out of necessity, that's fine. But we should realize that the claim about events is a just-so claim. We have no evidence that no events happen out of necessity. We can certainly agree that some events do not happen out of necessity, but that is different.

So why don't we do that so we can continue? I will stipulate that we are operating under the Descriptive Model of the Universe and no event ever happens out of necessity.

~~ Paul

P.S.: Under descriptive laws, (1) can there be fundamental existants such as quarks? (2) Can these fundamental existants have attributes, such as mass and spin? (3) Can those attributes cause the existants to interact in specific ways?

To be fair, a state of affairs contingent upon theories/laws already proven to the nth degree puts us a lot further ahead than a state of affairs contingent upon "God" or any other manufactured capricious entity. If all it takes is to declare something "the necessary ground of being" (aka "our inability to shed our folk intuitions"), then that's no advantage to the theist.

Linda

No, it is a bad suggestion based on a false distinction. "Laws" and "underlying reasons" amount to the same thing. There is no good reason to swap one phrase for the other.

Laws are the same things as underlying reasons only if we endow laws with some sort of magical causal abilities. In particular, if we are going with descriptive laws, then all they are is a human construct created to describe what we see. It's not as if they are the Ten Commandments given to us by god.

This amounts to there being a prescriptive law that is enforced such that under those conditions which constitute "the preceding state of affairs", the "physical events" must happen. But if that is the case, then who or what is enforcing that law?

Again, I think you're treating laws in a strange way. I could not find literature so adamant about treating them this way.

If you want to do this, then there are both descriptive and prescriptive laws, but we have no way of telling which is which.

~~ Paul

Since Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation is itself contingent (and not necessary), then so are the movements of the heavenly bodies which it describes. The only "necessity" is semantic - one of relation - not metaphysical, and the mere necessity of a semantic relationship doesn't at all help Paul's (and your) case. That is to say that, semantically, i.e., given what the Law means, it is necessarily the case that if Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation is true, then the heavenly bodies move in a certain way - but the necessity of this semantic relationship doesn't confer necessity to either of the related items, and nor is it even the relevant (i.e., metaphysical) sense in which your debating position requires those movements to be "necessary"... so, this observation of yours is not helpful.

What do you mean when you say that a descriptive law is contingent?

~~ Paul