Neuroscience and free will

I thought that it was pretty much established that this was the case, given that an ice cube may or may not melt in a lava bed.

If there is a world where events don't happen out of necessity, then there are no worlds where it does (necessity must be universal).

Damned if I can explain why my CD player works, but folk intuitions are always right, right?

Linda

Isn't the assumption of causality working the folk intuition?

But if one just assumes physic[al] law has to hold even for the consciousness it cannot explain then I'd agree physicalism is true [wrt causation], physics determines all decisions, and human life is worthless.

Who is making the decisions when a computer program runs?

~~ Paul

Anybody else a Discworld fan? This conversation reminds me a lot of Rincewind's musings about whether it would make more sense to learn about and harness inanimate forces, rather than depending upon difficult and capricious magic. This suggestion was ridiculous, of course.

I'm guessing it's the computer imp.

Linda

Golly gosh, I just don't understand it. I've been so accommodating. I've even allowed for the possibility that there could be a necessitated decision. I've given the hard determinists all the free rein they could want, and yet still nobody can give me an example of a necessitated decision. It's really most, most peculiar. Honestly, I just don't know how to explain this. Can anybody else?

Ultimately determinism is just randomness of a special kind. From physicist Aleksandar Mikovic :

Godel's Incompleteness Theorems and Platonic Metaphysics

A law of Nature can be easilly understood within a platonic metaphysics. It is a postulate in a mathematical theory we use to describe the Nature. On the other hand, explaining the laws of Nature within a materialistic metaphysics, is more complicated. If one accepts that the natural laws are different entities from space, time and matter, and are irreducible, then for a materialist it does not seem to be a problem to add a finite set of such objects to his ontology. In this case the natural laws are the postulates of a finite TOE. However, any TOE has to include the aritmethics, so that Goedel's theorems imply that there can not be a finite number of laws which completely explain the universe and one must introduce an infinite number of natural laws. This means that in addition to space, time and matter, one has to introduce an infinite number of other entities, which are not reducible to space, time and matter, and hence one is back at platonism.

In order to avoid introducing an infinite number of non-material entities in a materialistic metaphysics, one then has to give up the idea of a natural law as a mathematical concept (i.e. a postulate in a mathematical theory). Then the only explanation for a natural law in a materialistic metaphysics is that a natural law represents a regular pattern which appears in the fundamentaly chaotic motion of matter. This regularity appears at random and lasts for a very long time. In this case one accepts the view that at the fundamental level there is no order and the particle trajectories and field configurations are completely arbitrary. This doctrine is a logical possibility, but it is highly implausible. The standard example for this type of implausibility is to find a string of letters in a random sequence of letters which corresponds to a well-known novel; or to construct a functioning airplane by using a tornado passing through a junk yard. Also, if the natural laws are finite-duration random regularities, then the Earth can stop orbiting the Sun tomorrow, which means that our reality can disintegrate at any time in the future.

Another problem in a materialistic metaphysics is how an observer will recognize a natural law given that the ideas of order do not exist. This is also a problem in a platonic metaphysics, see [6], but it is a less severe problem, because the basic elements from which one can construct a solution already exist, see [2] for a possible solution.

(I mentioned his solution "[2]" above)

Also why would someone accept Laws as irreducible, and how would they avoid the problem we discussed from the Talbott paper (reposting excerpt for reader convenience?)

The Impossibility of Mere Obedience to Law

If, with so many scientists today, we construe laws as rules, we can put the matter this way: much more than rule-following is required of anything able to follow rules; conversely, no set of rules can by themselves explain the presence or functioning of that which is capable of following them.

It is, in other words, impossible to imagine matter that does not have some character of its own. To begin with, it must exist. But if it exists, it must do so in some particular manner, according to its own way of being. Even if we were to say, absurdly, that its only character is to obey external laws, this "law of obedience" itself could not be just another one of the external laws being obeyed. Something will be "going on" that could not be understood as obedience to law, and this something would be an essential expression of what matter was. To apprehend the world we would need to understand this expressive character in its own right, and we could never gain such an understanding solely through a consideration of external laws.

So we can hardly find coherence in the rather dualistic notion that physical laws reside, ghost-like, in some detached, abstract realm from which they impinge upon matter. But if, contrary to our initial assumption, we take laws to be in one way or another bound up with the world's substance — if we take them to be at least in part an expression of this substance — then the difficulty in the conventional view of law becomes even more intense. Surely it makes no sense to say that the world's material phenomena are the result — the wholly explained result — of matter obeying laws which it is itself busy expressing. In whatever manner we prefer to understand the material expression of the laws, this expression cannot be a matter of obedience to the laws being expressed! If whatever is there as the substance of the world at least in part determines the laws, then the laws cannot be said to determine what is there.

It just means if you can imagine it being different, it isn't axiomatic in the same way that something fundamental about change is axiomatic.

It's not metaphysically axiomatic, but why can't it be axiomatic in this world? And since I can imagine a world that is entirely deterministic, I'm not sure how this gets us anywhere.

Via free will to alter Final Cause.

You worded your question in such a way as to make it sound like an open question.

Do forces explain causation? It seems to me they follow from causation already assumed - you take measurements then posit the force is the source of those measurements.

You need some axiomatic causes. In both a deterministic and indeterministic world. So, again, how does this get us anywhere?

So physicalism rests on Luck...seems like an odd belief system to adhere to...

Sigh. I don't know what is rests on. All I know is that there appears to be random events in the world and there is lots of evidence and application to back that up.

Ultimately, all these proposals are going to rely on faith in the axioms. So it's just a question of which batch of faith you like better.

~~ Paul

Isn't the assumption of causality working the folk intuition?

I don't know - you're the one talking cause here.
What does cause have to do with necessary events?
Linda

Isn't the assumption of causality working the folk intuition?

Perhaps originally, but now we have truckloads of evidence for causality and even more truckloads of application. Which is not to say that at the bottom everything isn't just random. After all, who is making all the choices as a computer program executes?

I would probably give more credence to a free choice model of the world if only I had the slightest inkling of how a free decision is made, even given my willingness to buy into any axioms you need in the model. Far be it from me to deny axioms. Possibly if I follow along in this thread I will gain an inkling.

~~ Paul

Sigh. I don't know what is rests on. All I know is that there appears to be random events in the world and there is lots of evidence and application to back that up.

I don't think it would matter if everything external to humans ran like clockwork? Wouldn't we still need an account for why something else doesn't happen?

Indeterminism of particles highlights a problem, inspired some thinkers like Whitehead and gives us something to analogize to, but Aquinas certainly had no knowledge of QM when he was writing about Efficient & Final Cause.

Finally, randomness seems to violate our very logical understanding - how can one have a little bit of randomness without everything being just a matter of Luck given the rest of the world picture has to relate to the randomness in some way. It just seems to collapse into Hyperchaos, but then no causal questions are problems since everything is purely random.

Ultimately, all these proposals are going to rely on faith in the axioms. So it's just a question of which batch of faith you like better.

If we have to assume random/deterministic is a dichotomy in nature (is there a proof?) and the laws of physics bind even for the consciousness physics cannot causally explain...then there isn't anything to talk about?

That being said, the physicists mentioned above at the least don't think physics must hold in such a way. And while physical constants seem axiomatic we can imagine they can be different not just in some other universe but even patches of this universe. (see Cartwright's whole Dappled World thing.)

OTOH, the "axiom" that Change is the Actualizing of a Potential state, and because that which is Potential does not exist it must be done by something Actual holds in every imaginable world there is change save where the idea of "Hyperchaos" is true...but in those worlds no causal questions make any sense.

Perhaps originally, but now we have truckloads of evidence for causality and even more truckloads of application. Which is not to say that at the bottom everything isn't just random. After all, who is making all the choices as a computer program executes?

I would probably give more credence to a free choice model of the world if only I had the slightest inkling of how a free decision is made, even given my willingness to buy into any axioms you need in the model. Far be it from me to deny axioms. Possibly if I follow along in this thread I will gain an inkling.

~~ Paul

Yeah, I still don't know what you are asking for.

Maybe read Chris Fuch's stuff about getting a Participatory Universe from physics?

Anybody else a Discworld fan? This conversation reminds me a lot of Rincewind's musings about whether it would make more sense to learn about and harness inanimate forces, rather than depending upon difficult and capricious magic. This suggestion was ridiculous, of course.

I'm guessing it's the computer imp.

Linda

I read them when I was in my 20s...can't really recall much now. My sister had all of them I think...

I don't know - you're the one talking cause here.
What does cause have to do with necessary events?
Linda

Interesting question, though I am new the nomenclature so I will have to defer to someone else coming along.

I don't think it would matter if everything external to humans ran like clockwork? Wouldn't we still need an account for why something else doesn't happen?

We do account for that, just not at the lowest axiomatic level. I can't conceive of how we can account for it there. I can't conceive how we can account for it there in any sort of world.

Finally, randomness seems to violate our very logical understanding - how can one have a little bit of randomness without everything being just a matter of Luck given the rest of the world picture has to relate to the randomness in some way. It just seems to collapse into Hyperchaos, but then no causal questions are problems since everything is purely random.

We have randomness at the bottom, but the probabilities are such that we get consistency at higher levels. For example, even though the positions of electrons are random, they are found in predictable orbitals.

If we have to assume random/deterministic is a dichotomy in nature (is there a proof?) and the laws of physics bind even for the consciousness physics cannot causally explain...then there isn't anything to talk about?

I'm suspending that dichotomy for this conversation. Otherwise it is rather difficult to talk about free will.

That being said, the physicists mentioned above at the least don't think physics must hold in such a way. And while physical constants seem axiomatic we can imagine they can be different not just in some other universe but even patches of this universe. (see Cartwright's whole Dappled World thing.)

This is an empirical issue as far as I'm concerned. We wait and watch.

OTOH, the "axiom" that Change is the Actualizing of a Potential state, and because that which is Potential does not exist it must be done by something Actual holds in every imaginable world there is change save where the idea of "Hyperchaos" is true...but in those worlds no causal questions make any sense.

I'm not sure what that means. It sounds like it means

Change is the Actualizing of a Potential State, and because that which is a Potential state does not exist, the actualizing must be done by something Actual.

But then I don't know how you can actualize something that doesn't exist.

Sure, we can take something like that as an axiom. It doesn't help me understand anything about free will.

~~ Paul