Neuroscience and free will

The only way to resolve this problem definitively would be to in turn resolve the differences in our presuppositions, especially on the nature of mind/consciousness, but it would be a long, slow process, and I am not sure whether it would even bear fruit at the end... is it worth embarking on?

This is one reason why I don't dwell inordinately long on philosophical debate. Mountains of ideas are constructed and elaborated upon, but there is always a dependence on some initial assumptions.

Unless and until there is agreement on the initial assumptions - and a recognition and acknowledgement that they are indeed assumptions, personally I find no satisfaction in these areas.

One example from my younger days, someone once raised a question as to whether it was better to view the world through the eyes of an optimist or those of a pessimist. One could argue a case for both. I simply chose one and moved on.  Other examples either solidified from an undetermined view, or even shifted, on the basis of evidence. The ability to shift one's position is in itself something to ponder on. How often do any of us truly change our position on things? That's both a serious and a rhetorical question, it is intended seriously but it doesn't require an answer.

The prime example is: "How is a free decision made?". It seems to me that the likely reason why you don't accept the answer(s) I've shared with you several times by now is that you see consciousness and the brain as identical, and the brain as a massively complex internetwork of neurons, and so you expect that an explanation must ultimately reduce to a massively complex series of neural events, and so, when, from my provisional perspective in which consciousness is not identical to the brain, nor reducible to it and the neural network, but instead is in relationship with the brain, I offer an answer that is quite simple and not massively complex, you cannot accept it. And if I haven't quite characterised the problem correctly, I've probably come near enough to make the point. And so the merry-go-round continues...

Sciborg asked the same question above: "Why this particular resolution to this event instead of another?"

I have no expectation that the answer will be in terms of neural processing. I'm just looking for a simple logical statement of how a free choice is made that doesn't sound like it's just deterministic with possibly a few coin flips. No technical stuff, no neuroscience, not even much philosophy.

~~ Paul

Some thoughts on the different types of necessity, and to answer a question that Paul put: free will is ultimately a metaphysical concept, and so metaphysical necessity is obviously a relevant type of necessity. "Nomological necessity" is relevant only to the extent that "physical laws" which are beyond the determining power of the free agent, apply to (and thus restrict
[*]) that agent. We've defined the acronym "GCDE" as a "generalised conditional description of an event". We've stipulated that some GCDEs are "laws" in that their conditions pick out many events in the world. Some of those "laws" in turn might be "nomologically necessary", whereas others are merely "accidentally true generalisations" that just happen to apply to multiple events. So, even given a set of "nomological necessary laws", it remains plausible that they have only limited applicability to free agents, whose (the agents') metaphysical freedom gives them ultimate determining power over at least some of the remaining "GCDEs".

[*]ETA: Though it should be pointed out that there is an argument that as much as "restricting" agents, physical laws are necessary for the agent to exercise freedom, in that they provide the structure within which decisions are meaningful and which decisions manipulate.

[*]
I don't think that the fact that free will is a metaphysical concept means it has to operate the same, or even exist, in all possible worlds.

I thought you were saying descriptivism means that no laws can be nomologically necessary, because that makes them prescriptive. Are you saying that removing free agents from the grip of those nomologically necessary laws makes those laws descriptive?

~~ Paul

I know I've mentioned this before but history does seem to be repeating itself (pun intended) and to illustrate the point I've culled a few frustrated responses from LoneShaman in that afore-mentioned long debate on the Sekptiko (Mind-Energy) forum. It stuck in my mind that Paul's debating tactic back then was simply to keep repeating the question as though he was being ignored yet LS (and Michael Larkin and others) wrote pages of extended responses to his questions just as Laird and Sciborg have done here. Yet still the constant repetition of the same question. Here's a few samples of LoneShaman indicating his frustration.

So you just don't think it's possible that I believe the answers are not actually answering my question?

If you think my question has been answered, I would be forever in your debt if you could post the statements that answer my question, or link to a particular post. Then I will honestly tell you whether I think that answers my question.

Please note that my question is: How does a free agent make a free decision? Or, as Sciborg put it: "Why this particular resolution to this event instead of another?" My question is not: Who or where is the free agent?

~~ Paul

Right. This is what motivated my answer to Paul's question, "What are the laws of free choices?" - the answer is there aren't any, there are simply psychological reasons why some people tend to make some choices more often than, and make some more often in the same way as, others.

Again, I'm not asking for any laws, just a description of how the free choice is made, even just one of them. Now, if it is necessarily the case that there is no way to describe how a free choice is made, so be it. However, if accepting the existence of a thing that you cannot describe, even in principle, is legitimate, then don't we have to accept lots of other interesting ideas?

Note that if we cannot describe how a free choice is made, then I believe we also have to admit that we can never point to one.

~~ Paul

Yep... it's good form to assume good faith in a discussion, but at some point you do have to wonder (sorry, Paul, but honestly...).

I am participating in good faith.

~~ Paul

Of course for Free Will to simply break away from the causal chain of the past is to have an entity that we'd regard as insane. So this Freedom has to be within the causal sequence, which is why Sartre's quote is relevant. Free Will is properly located as the possibility selection ("what you do") of some prior set of events ("with what is done to you"). So Free Will is the selection of the Effect of what has come before, not a cause unto itself or leaping outside of the causal chain.

Well, if that selection from the possibility space is not determined by those possibilities and the current state of affairs, then you are leaping outside the deterministic/random causal chain. If the "causal chain" is taken to include free decisions, too, then of course I agree that you aren't leaping outside the causal chain, because there is no way to leap out of it.

Anyway, the point of all this was originally to answer the question of how free will could work. Whether there are Final/Inner Causes in Nature seems to be the big question on which this all hinges. I believe that without Final/Inner Cause you run into the issues with "Randomness" and "Natural Laws" I mentioned above.

It seems to me that the question of Causes is one of the source of the decision, not an explanation for how it is performed.

Lots more could be said, but this - as a restating of Whitehead with some help from other authors - seems like an answer to the "how" question. You could apply the "how" to different pieces of my dissection of events, but that strikes me as rather cheeky given Physicalism sustains itself on Luck alone given there's no Ground-floor reason why any event happens.

Again, I'm not sure why the lowest levels of physics can't be its own ground floor. Is that any more of a just-so claim than postulating a separate agent/being/thing that is the ground floor?

~~ Paul

Also, if we allow for "nomologically necessary laws" then two tricky and closely-related questions present themselves:

1. In virtue of what are nomologically necessary laws "necessary"? That is, in virtue of what do they describe events that "have to" happen or properties / states of affairs that "have to" be the case? For that which is metaphysically or logically necessary, there is an intuitive answer: in virtue of its being the case in every possible world. If, no matter which world we imagine, something is the case (true/exists) in that world, then it is intuitively obvious that that thing "has to" be true/exist. What, similarly, can we say for nomological necessity?
   
2. What distinguishes "nomologically necessary laws" from "accidentally true generalisations"?
   

Feel free to share your answers...

(1) I agree with your statement about metaphysical and logical necessity. However, I think we could easily argue about whether some claim or law or supposed necessity is, in fact, a metaphysical claim. This is why I was confused to learn that your descriptive laws were supposed to disallow necessary events in all possible worlds.

I'm not sure what the issue is about nomological necessity. It means that the thing is necessary in a particular specified world, no?

(2) If the laws are supposed to be descriptive, then nothing distinguishes them.

~~ Paul

Paul, I wonder if it isn't a description you are looking for generically but a description that suits your perspective?

No one is going to be able to provide a description that jives with current science.   If such an explanation were known (ore perhaps more aptly "existed"), we wouldn't even be having this discussion.

Further, let's assume someone posted a description in this thread that you found satisfactory.  What then?  What does the description actually do for you, again presuming it doesn't have a scientifically provable basis?

This is why I continue to struggle with how you can imagine the concept of "random" but can't imagine the concept of "free decisions".  To me both are equally intractable in that neither has any scientific basis and are both, effectively, faith or philosophical concepts.

[Laird]

Laird: What distinguishes "nomologically necessary laws" from "accidentally true generalisations"?

Paul: If the laws are supposed to be descriptive, then nothing distinguishes them.

It's obliviousness like this that makes it not worth engaging with you further. You don't seem to understand the implications of that which you say. You are the one arguing for nomological necessity, but when offered the opportunity to make a cogent argument for it, you instead say something that utterly undercuts it.