Neuroscience and free will

I was doing a bit of google searching and happened across a Reddit discussion (for clarity, I am not involved in the discussion - it is an unknown third party) involving Noam Chomsky. He seems to address what Paul seems to conclude, i.e. that there are only two possibilities: determinism and randomness. Make of it what you will:

I'm happy to admit to begging the question when I assume the only things we've got are determinism and randomness. Yes, if that's all there is, then there is no libertarian free will. This is why I discarded that assumption for this conversation.

Notice, though, that Chomsky goes no further. Dude, please, give me something to help me reject my dichotomy once and for all.

~~ Paul

I agree with Chomsky but I'd go further - determinism and randomness are just external expressions of our expectation. The very fact you can put a probability distribution on something you cannot explain in terms of causes (the position of the electron in its "cloud" of possible coordinates) shows that.

Are you sure that physics not claiming to explain ultimate causes isn't just an admission of something that cannot actually be done?

If you invent an agent and call it the cause of a particular event, you have not actually explained the ultimate cause. 

~~ Paul

[Laird]

So let's say that my decision is partially determined, a bit random, and partially free. I could then write a script after the fact, but it would have a hole in it, an elision.

Code:

1. first step
2. second step
.
. poof
.
n. final step

Nope. There is no "poof" step any different to any of the others. Each step is freely willed.

Are you sure that physics not claiming to explain ultimate causes isn't just an admission of something that cannot actually be done?

Yes I'm sure. Physics is about relations, without explaining relata, so it only makes sense it cannot explain intrinsic properties like causal power.

The existence of physical axioms doesn't seem like any more or less "no reason" than the existence of the Final Cause. There has to be something at the bottom.

Physical axioms don't need to exist in every possible world. ["Change being actualizing of that which is potential, requiring something already actual" is true in all worlds from Hogwarts to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.]

That's a fine term, too. Though it doesn't answer my question.

Sorry, what is this question again? Maybe you can rephrase it rather than just using the word "how" because I still don't really understand what it is you want. You say a "script" - do you mean something like an algorithm or equation? Because then it would obviously no longer be free.

It's that "make use of Final Cause" part that seems vague to me.

Well we can dive into Final Causes, maybe go back to the old brick hitting the window...

That's actually a small step. Now I'd like to know how the "force" effects a decision.

And if I say it's a fundamental force, that would just not be a real explanation for you correct? Though I suspect most people would, upon seeing a demonstration of definitive macro-PK, be convinced of mental causation as "Mind over Matter". [Personally I like the Unity of Will & Force...]

I'm okay with Free Will at the bottom. But we still don't know what attributes it has (spin?  ) and we don't know how the layers between it and the actual choice work.

Spin wouldn't be at the bottom since it would have to be explained [why] the property either stays the same or changes. [And I don't know what "layers" are needed?]

I'll have to study this, since it reads to me like a sequence of capitalized words.

"Just remember ALL CAPS when you spell the man's name." (Seriously though I figure it's easier to read with capitals for key terms?)

Why is what I think is random not actually random?

True randomness would defy any probability distribution. It would be Meillassoux's "Hyperchaos" when particles could change into dragons...or the Real could be as predictable as clockwork forever. [There's a thread on it here.]

They haven't been filled from my point of view. And this is probably how the story goes. You have invented a bunch of terms that are somehow relevant to the question of how a free decision is made. None of this gives me any understanding of how these various agents and causes make a free decision.

Pretty sure all those terms, save perhaps "Inner Cause", existed before I was born [and I mentioned how I was drawing that from William James earlier in the thread].

Plus how I've used them is pretty much a standard reading of Whitehead on causation AFAICTell. As much as I wish I could claim credit for the ideas there's nothing new in there.

And unless you have some other explanation at the event level of a decision I am still not sure what you are asking for.

I thought it was showing something is neither determined nor random, which [AFAICTell] is just a confusion of what those terms mean and where they are applicable.

Then I thought it was how the axiomatic/fundamental free will can have causal precursors....which is why I noted Free Will would have to be a determiner of what effect a set of Efficient Causes have.

Now I am again unsure what you're asking, but it increasingly seems it might be something that is only a problem for materialists/physicalists rather than something applicable across all paradigms?

Yes, but they are so foreign to me that I have to go back and reread many posts.

We probably do need a Wiki of some sort...

I believe that is a nonstandard definition of final cause.

Hmmm...maybe. But I've seen it in at least a few places.

Nope. There is no "poof" step any different to any of the others. Each step is freely willed.

Yeah with each step becoming an Efficient/External Cause that translates the agent to a new Possibility Space applicable in the next Now.

I can see why Whitehead saw this process as a means of explaining all causation as mental causation, it fits quite well.

I'm not sure that I would agree with that at all. You have demanded a description of a choice while stipulating "random or deterministic". Are you saying that free choice must be either random or deterministic? Why can't we include subjective preference? Does subjectivity inevitably reduce to physical precursors (movement of particles, neuronal activity, etc.)? Or, to ask it another way: how do you define precursors?

I think of precursors as anything that can impact the currently experienced Present Moment, by which I mean the Now that Einstein reportedly felt physics couldn't explain:

In 1963, philosopher Rudolf Carnap recalled a conversation he had with Einstein about what Einstein called "the Now." "Once, Einstein said that the problem of the Now worried him seriously," Carnap wrote. "He explained that the experience of the Now means something special for man, something essentially different from the past and the future, but that this important difference does not and cannot occur within physics. That this experience cannot be grasped by science seemed to him a matter of painful but inevitable resignation." He suspected, Carnap continued, "that there is something essential about the Now which is just outside of the realm of science."

To me what is essential about the Now is it is between the indeterminate future and the definitely determinate past, and from the decisions made in the Now we end up bringing a particular state of affairs out all states that could potentially exist into the actual. Future becomes Present, and Present becomes Past.

In an attempt to de-jargon an explanation from here (apologies for the repetition from posts you likely have read):

So regarding the above note re: Precursors, that would include not just subjective feelings and physical forces, but also whatever decision we made in the previous Now-Just-Past and all the old Nows-Long-Gone. Each decision + all other factors beyond us determines what decisions will be available to us in the next Now. For an extreme example, if I decide to take a drug that knocks me out in the Present very soon there won't be any waking decisions left to me until the drug wears off. For a less extreme example that runs from the Present into the not-so-far Future, if I decide to go to a vegetarian restaurant and follow through all the way to said eatery I won't be able to select from any meat dishes but likely  the number of veggie dishes I can choose from increases.

So then at any Present Moment there are a set of possible choices I can make, which is what "Possibility Space" refers to. We know of the possible choices available to us because of Consciousness, specifically "Intentionality" which refers to the Mind's ability to have Thoughts About Things --> Which includes things that don't exist like future potential states. Of course we also need Subjectivity, our ability to sense the world via qualia & Rationality by which we know what are realistic choices as well as likely consequences of such possible choices.

All of this goes into how a being with Free Will can make choices while still having its past be relevant b/c without taking into account the being's memory would make the choice devoid of greater meaning. What is noted in the above is that the past determines the choices available rather than determining the actual choice. This is what is meant by precursors being taken into account without necessitating a single outcome.

This is comparable to change in any reality. To have any kind of change something Potential (but not yet actualized) becomes Actual. Yet since nothing that is Potential exists in the Present, what is needed for change to occur is something that is already Actual. For example for an ice cube to melt and enter into the previously potential state of being water you need actual heat from, say, a fire.


However, why does the ice need to melt? Can it not stay frozen even in a lava bed? What ensures a particular cause produces a particular effect? This is the question I've returned to continuously -> When something happens, why doesn't something else happen? There has to be something ensuring one outcome out of all the possible outcomes follows or there would be no change in the world.

We could say Natural Laws make ice melt, but what are they made of and how do they force a particular outcome? Even if there is something in the ice cube that allows a Law to be imposed on it, this characteristic would need to bind the ice to the Law...but why does this characteristic itself not change? Another Law? In fact, even laws could change - are they enforced by meta-laws?

Since we observe change happening, there has to be something more to causes than just something Actual actualizing a Potential State - we need something to make one outcome determinate. This would be the ice cube's Possibility Selector (what could be called Inner Cause or Final Cause).

So for any cause-effect relationship we have the presence of things that are Actual ("Efficient Cause" or "External Cause") and something within the entity undergoing change that selects from available Possible Effects ("Final Cause" or "Internal Cause").

To go back to the free being that incorporates its relevant Past, I'd use Sartre's definition of Free Will -> "Freedom is what you do with what is done to you." So the past leading up to the decision is the Efficient/External Cause (meaning the causal precursors that led to the available possible decisions) and this decision is made by the Final/Inner Cause of the free being.

So the free being is not just making decisions disregarding what has come before, as what has come before is included in the Efficient Causes. And the free being is not just acting randomly -- which would mean the actualizing of a Potential State without something already Actual involved -- because the Past & Present states of the world (meaning all precursors to a decision) are the Actual in this case.

As to why any of this matters, I'd say it gives a picture of Free Will that is in line with the way all causation has to be explained. This is my best attempt at understanding the supposed big problem facing Free Will, though I am not 100% sure exactly what problem skeptics are getting at and perhaps it only is an issue for physicalist-type views of the world...

There are varied things that need to be explained further, I'm sure, but that's a rough sketch of what Laird and I have been getting at. Ideally (pun somewhat intended) it provides some clarity as to what a "how" explanation of Free Will needs to look like in that it provides a place for the past & present states of the world & the being itself to be relevant (Efficient Causes) as well as a place for our rational faculties to intercede (Curating the decisions that we could take, which includes fatal or crazy ones, to the more rational decisions applicable in the Present Moment).

Finally, as an aside, I think this picture also shows why a Mind is arguably involved (or was involved at some point) whenever there is change. After all, is there any Possibility Selector one can think of besides the Mind? More needs to be said about the immateriality of the aforementioned Intentionality / Rationality / Subjectivity, as well as arguments for God's existence, but seeing all of physcialism's failures of explanation I do increasingly feel there is no causation that is not, in some form, mental causation.

'How can the brain be in the head if the head is in the brain?'
 -- J. R. Smythies

[Laird]

However, why does the ice need to melt? Can it not stay frozen even in a lava bed? What ensures a particular cause produces a particular effect or set of effects? This is the question I've returned to continuously -> When something happens, why doesn't something else happen? There has to be something ensuring one outcome out of all the possible outcomes follows or there would be no change in the world.

We could say Natural Laws make ice melt, but what are they made of and how do they force a particular outcome? Even if there is something in the ice cube that allows a Law to be imposed on it, this characteristic would need to bind the ice to the Law...but why does this characteristic itself not change? Another Law? In fact, even laws could change - are they enforced by meta-laws?

This is the crucial point. Paul would say that the ice melts because of a "nomologically necessary law" - but we have seen that when asked in virtue of exactly what it is that this "law" is "necessary", and how such a "law" is different from an "accidental generalisation", Paul has no answer, and even acknowledged that to the extent that laws are descriptive (which is his position - descriptivism), there is no difference. In other words, so-called nomologically "necessary" laws are as good as accidents. What more does one need to validate Sci's reasoning above?

This is the crucial point. Paul would say that the ice melts because of a "nomologically necessary law" - but we have seen that when asked in virtue of exactly what it is that this "law" is "necessary", and how such a "law" is different from an "accidental generalisation", Paul has no answer, and even acknowledged that to the extent that laws are descriptive (which is his position - descriptivism), there is no difference. In other words, so-called nomologically "necessary" laws are as good as accidents. What more does one need to validate Sci's reasoning above?

Well naturally I agree with this.

I would admit that credit for the insight re: inadequacy of physicalist natural laws comes from Talbott's Do Physical Laws Make Things Happen? & Nancy Cartwright's No God, No Laws.

Also Aristotle & Aquinas too...in fact the above is the opening to some interesting arguments for God...though not necessarily "God" as a being but rather the Ground of Being which Itself is quite an odd entity if one seeks someone to worship...but it does lead back to the idea that all causation is actually mental causation...

[Laird]

Well naturally I agree with this.

Naturally... or.... freely...?...

in fact the above is the opening to some interesting arguments for God...though not necessarily "God" as a being but rather the Ground of Being which Itself is quite an odd entity if one seeks someone to worship...but it does lead back to the idea that all causation is actually mental causation...

Here's an interesting thought - at least to me. We've (individually - Sci and I) canvassed the idea that there is a rational argument for a Ground of Being having a necessary existence - that is, an existence in every possible world - but that would seem to give us only a bare glimmer of the nature of this Being. I wonder whether it has (1) more necessary properties that can be demonstrated via arguments that we haven't yet considered, and (2) if not, then contingent properties that apply simply in a limited set of possible worlds amongst which our actual world is contained?