Neuroscience and free will

Pretty sure Efficient Cause provides opportunity for decision -> Free Will is Final Cause that makes a decision is a causal account?

It seems a better causal account then the how explanation you have for a circuit, which was an appeal to laws of physics?

Could you expand your first sentence there? I do not understand it.

~~ Paul

Clearly we have different notions of what is incredible.

If I can get a very long series of billiard-ball-like causations in order to run a computer program, what is to stop the Agent from doing this for the entire universe?

As far as free decisions by microelectronic circuits goes, this is where we may part ways just a tad concerning the incredible.

~~ Paul

Well we also have different opinions on randomness, which I think violates the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

And determinism is just randomness for a special kind if there's no explanation for why something else doesn't happen.

Could some super-Agent direct all things to happen by Fate? I mean one can always wonder about this sort of thing, just like maybe all reality is just someone's dream?

I don't think electronic circuits make free decisions since programs can't ever be conscious. Not sure who is saying circuits are making free decisions, rather if Panpsychism of some variety is true wouldn't it be the particles making decisions of some sort?

Could you expand your first sentence there? I do not understand it.

~~ Paul

My sentence  is just a short hand summary of this post

Perhaps you could expand what you mean by causal account? Because whether one agrees or not that seems like a causal account to me.

If [by] causal account you mean a cause that can be set into mathematics then we'd just have Physicalism which we all agree has no free will and everything about human life is worthless. [Thankfully we know it's false.] But I was thinking the discussion was could free will be possible in some possible world, which some of us would take to be this world but others would take to be some possibility that isn't this world.

Right, but who is making the decisions when it actually runs?

The decisions are programmed as steps that are computer user has very limited control over, but are ultimately decided and implemented by the programmer.

Layers of logic that create a useful tool.

After all, we are assuming that there are no necessitated events, aren't we?

Makes more sense than your irrational assumptions.

If a computer as complex as the ones today could have ever been created by necessitated events, I'd like to know how that would have ever been possible.

And no, you aren't allowed to point to the past as evidence, just because the past is set in stone, all the choices having long since been made. Because the choice that could have been made in the past-present could have been much different, but ultimately went down a path decided via free will.

The decisions are programmed as steps that are computer user has very limited control over, but are ultimately decided and implemented by the programmer.

Layers of logic that create a useful tool.


Makes more sense than your irrational assumptions.

If a computer as complex as the ones today could have ever been created by necessitated events, I'd like to know how that would have ever been possible.

And no, you aren't allowed to point to the past as evidence, just because the past is set in stone, all the choices having long since been made. Because the choice that could have been made in the past-present could have been much different, but ultimately went down a path decided via free will.

That's one way to neuter an argument.

The decisions are programmed as steps that are computer user has very limited control over, but are ultimately decided and implemented by the programmer.

Layers of logic that create a useful tool.


Makes more sense than your irrational assumptions.

If a computer as complex as the ones today could have ever been created by necessitated events, I'd like to know how that would have ever been possible.

And no, you aren't allowed to point to the past as evidence, just because the past is set in stone, all the choices having long since been made. Because the choice that could have been made in the past-present could have been much different, but ultimately went down a path decided via free will.

Yeah this is how I see it - programs have no consciousness, they can only be about things because of minds..."I can  explain...let me explain" :

As the materialist Rosenberg pointed out under physicalism we can't have thoughts because matter itself is never about anything.

And aboutness of thought hooks into the world in the opposite direction of sensory info coming from the world, which as the neuroscientist Tallis points out opens up reality as a Possibility Space from which we can make decisions.

Computers have derived Aboutness (what philosophers call "Intentionality"), our Aboutness of Thought is intrinsic. Programs are mental abstractions dependent on thought, specifically Rational thought, which IMO a rational person has to conclude is Immaterial.

I guess the last part would be our subjectivity, our awareness of qualia, and even Sam Harris noted materialism is completely nonsensical in this regard, demanding a Something from Nothing type miracle...

...heck even Skeptic magazine founder Michael Shermer is slowly catching on:

Are consciousness, free will and God insoluble mysteries?

Well we also have different opinions on randomness, which I think violates the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

And determinism is just randomness for a special kind if there's no explanation for why something else doesn't happen.

There is an explanation, just not all the way down to the axioms. But you won't end up with axioms that you can explain, either.

When I freely choose chicken, why didn't I choose fish?

I don't think electronic circuits make free decisions since programs can't ever be conscious. Not sure who is saying circuits are making free decisions, rather if Panpsychism of some variety is true wouldn't it be the particles making decisions of some sort?

The circuit must be making free decisions if there are absolutely no events that happen by necessity, which I believe is Laird's contention.

~~ Paul

My sentence  is just a short hand summary of this post

Perhaps you could expand what you mean by causal account? Because whether one agrees or not that seems like a causal account to me.

If [by] causal account you mean a cause that can be set into mathematics then we'd just have Physicalism which we all agree has no free will and everything about human life is worthless. [Thankfully we know it's false.] But I was thinking the discussion was could free will be possible in some possible world, which some of us would take to be this world but others would take to be some possibility that isn't this world.

I'll check out that post.

I'm not looking for mathematics, or even for logic. I'm just trying to grasp how this free agent selects one outcome and not the other.

Why did the free agent choose chicken and not fish? Both were possibilities at the last moment, since we agree that the choice is not determined. And yet the agent chose chicken. Why not fish? There must be a nonrandom reason why the agent chose chicken, a reason that still leaves the door open for having made the other choice.

~~ Paul

Makes more sense than your irrational assumptions.

If a computer as complex as the ones today could have ever been created by necessitated events, I'd like to know how that would have ever been possible.

And no, you aren't allowed to point to the past as evidence, just because the past is set in stone, all the choices having long since been made. Because the choice that could have been made in the past-present could have been much different, but ultimately went down a path decided via free will.

I'm not talking about designing, building, or programming the computer. Please understand this.

I'm asking who is making the free decisions after all that is done and the computer is actually executing the program, unattended.

~~ Paul

As the materialist Rosenberg pointed out under physicalism we can't have thoughts because matter itself is never about anything.

So this robot is not "about" jumping? Okay, then could I get a definition of aboutness?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcbGRBPkrps

~~ Paul