Neuroscience and free will

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?

Final Cause exerted via Intentionality / Subjectivity / Rationality.

Perhaps my reply to Valmar on the intellectual bankruptcy of physicalism may help?

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

I think Laird just means the seemingly necessary events of physics are contingent, but events can be "stabilized" by some Law Giver to which the natural laws would then be contingent upon.

Likely - assuming I am reading Laird correctly - something along the lines of the following argument from Feser:

Magic versus metaphysics

Indeed, if any view is plausibly accused of being “magical” in the sense in question, it is atheism itself.  The reason is that it is very likely that an atheist has to hold that the operation of at least the fundamental laws that govern the universe is an “unintelligible brute fact”; as I have noted before, that was precisely the view taken by J. L. Mackie and Bertrand Russell.  The reason an atheist (arguably) has to hold this is that to allow that the world is not ultimately a brute fact -- that it is intelligible through and through -- seems to entail that there is some level of reality which is radically non-contingent or necessary in an absolute sense.  And that would in turn be to allow (so the traditional metaphysician will argue) that there is something which, as the Thomist would put it, is pure actuality and ipsum esse subsistens or “subsistent being itself” -- and thus something which has the divine attributes which inexorably flow from being pure actuality and ipsum esse subsistens.  Hence it would be to give up atheism.


But to operate in a way that is ultimately unintelligible in principle -- as the atheist arguably has to say the fundamental laws of nature do, insofar as he has to say that they are “just there” as a brute fact, something that could have been otherwise but happens to exist anyway, with no explanation -- just is to be “magical” in the objectionable sense.  In fact it is only on a theistic view of the world that the laws of nature are not “magical”; and the Mackie/Russell position is (as I argue in the post linked to above) ultimately incoherent for the same sorts of reason that magical thinking in general is incoherent.

Final Cause exerted via Intentionality / Subjectivity / Rationality.

And why did the Final Cause have those particular intentions and subjective "feelings"?

It's whys all the way down.

I think Laird just means the seemingly necessary events of physics are contingent, but events can be "stabilized" by some Law Giver to which the natural laws would then be contingent upon.

So some agent has the ability to make a series of events happen out of necessity, without needing to make decisions about them as they flow along? That doesn't sound like Laird's contention, but I certainly can't speak for him.

~~ Paul

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

No-one, obviously. The complex layers of abstraction do their work as they've been designed to.

What are you even getting at?

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

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

~~ Paul

The "aboutness" means holding concepts in the mind. Having an ability doesn't mean holding concepts in the mind. As per Putnam's Renewing Philosophy:

Dogs which tended to eat meat rather than vegetables when both were available produced more offspring (gazelles which ran faster than lions escaped the lions and were thus able to produce more offspring). Just as we aren't tempted to say that gazelles have a proto-concept of running fast, so dogs don't have a proto-concept of meat. Indeed, in the case of the dog, there are a variety of different descriptions of the adaptive behavior: that certain dogs recognize meat better, or that certain dogs recognize food with a certain appearance and taste better, or just that certain dogs just recognize stuff with a certain appearance and taste better.

The "reference" we get out of this bit of hypothetical natural selection will be just the reference we put in our choice of a description.

Evolution won't give you more intentionality than you pack into it.

Since matter has no mental qualities (assuming Physicalism is true) there's no way to get Something from Nothing. Rosenberg contrasts this with the consciousness he ultimately believes to be illusory:

"Red octagons are about stopping because we interpret them that way...

If the Paris neurons are about Paris the same way a red octagon is about stopping, then there has to be something in the brain that interprets the Paris neurons as being about Paris...

First, show the octagon to someone who has never seen or heard of a stop sign...Just seeing the picture or committing it to memory won’t be enough for that person to interpret the shape as being about stopping or about anything else for that matter. Remember those strange squiggles from Greek and Chinese? Even if you memorized them so you could reproduce the squiggles, that wouldn’t be enough for you to interpret them as being about stopping. You’d have to add something to your memory, or image, of the squiggles to interpret them. Similarly, the neural interpreter has to add something to the Paris neurons (or maybe to its copy of them) to interpret them as being about Paris. What can it add? Only more neurons, wired up in some way or other that makes the Paris neurons be about Paris. And now we see why what the neural interpreter has to add is going to have to be about Paris, too. It can’t interpret the Paris neurons as being about Paris unless some other part of it is, separately and independently, about Paris. These will be the neurons that “say” that the Paris neurons are about Paris; they will be about the Paris neurons the way the Paris neurons are about Paris.

Now the problem is clear. We see why the Paris neurons can’t be about Paris the way that red octagons are about stopping. It’s because that way lies a regress that will prevent us from ever understanding what we wanted to figure out in the first place: how one chunk of stuff—the Paris neurons—can be about another chunk of stuff—Paris."

He then notes the only way to get off this train of infinite regress is something Physicalism by its very definition denies - mental characteristics to matter, namely units of matter to intrinsically be about some aspect of reality.

"Our knowledge of physics is only an empty shell — a form of symbols. It is knowledge of structural form, and not knowledge of content. All through the physical world runs that unknown content..."
-Sir Arthur Eddington

=-=-=

edit: Added in an effort to scale back multiple replies:

And why did the Final Cause have those particular intentions and subjective "feelings"?

It's whys all the way down.

No, b/c then there would be no change. It isn't like the vertical axis of time, where one can make arguments for there being a Beginning in the Past or say there is an infinite regression of past events.

On the horizontal axis, the level of a single event, since we know there is change possible outcomes have to be selected for.

So some agent has the ability to make a series of events happen out of necessity, without needing to make decisions about them as they flow along? That doesn't sound like Laird's contention, but I certainly can't speak for him.

Well they don't happen out of necessity, they happen contingently because of God - maybe that wasn't Laird's point though. IIRC this [contingency of laws] is why the long time famous atheist Anthony Flew became a theist, as recounted in There is a God...but yes it's better to ask Laird himself.

[Laird]

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

Sci: I think Laird just means the seemingly necessary events of physics are contingent, but events can be "stabilized" by some Law Giver to which the natural laws would then be contingent upon.

Paul: So some agent has the ability to make a series of events happen out of necessity, without needing to make decisions about them as they flow along? That doesn't sound like Laird's contention, but I certainly can't speak for him.

Sci: Well they don't happen out of necessity, they happen contingently because of God - maybe that wasn't Laird's point though. IIRC this [contingency of laws] is why the long time famous atheist Anthony Flew became a theist, as recounted in There is a God...but yes it's better to ask Laird himself.

Yes, no event is necessary - though events might occur in accordance with regularities ("laws") which might themselves, as Sci suggests, be contingent upon a Law Giver who is logically/metaphysically necessary: the argument for this Being seems at least plausible whether or not compelling.

Here's what this (especially absent a Law Giver) means in practice, to anticipate an objection:

Objection: OK, you've granted that the regularities ("laws") do hold, even though they do not hold out of necessity (in the logical/metaphysical sense). But now let's take a particular event: an initially stationary ball held by Jimmy is dropped from a height and falls to the ground with an acceleration of roughly 9.8 metres per second squared. Given that the law of gravity does hold, this event does seem to be necessary. If not, then why not?

Response: It is very tempting to grant that which you suggest: that given that the law of gravity does hold, then the events that conform to it happen necessarily. But this is to confuse the necessity of the relation with the necessity of the related items. I've pointed this fallacy out already in a previous post. The necessity is in the meaning of the law of gravity: given what the law of gravity means it is necessarily the case that if/when/where it applies, then events occur in conformance with it - but this relational necessity does not confer necessity upon either of those which it relates: the law and the events which conform to it.

Let's look, then, at this apparently "necessary" event more closely. I am claiming that it is not in fact necessary, but, the objector asks: given that it "conforms to a law", how could it possibly be otherwise?

There are a few possible answers which are all quite simple, but they all boil down to the possibility of different "laws". Here are a couple of possibilities:

1. The law of gravity which describes the event (to which the event "conforms") could have been even just slightly different, potentially such that only this event was affected by the difference. It could have been the case that under the specific conditions under which Jimmy dropped the ball, the general law (of gravity) entailed an attractive force of double that which is actually the case in our world under other conditions. Thus, this apparently "necessary" event is not in fact necessary, because it is very possible that it (and only it) was different even given that it "conforms to a law".
   
2. Some other law which applies to the event and which qualifies/moderates the effects of the law of gravity (such as a law of electromagnetism) could have been just slightly different, again, potentially such that only this event was affected by the difference.
   

So, it's easy to see that even if we do hold the view that laws "govern" events, this does not entail that the events themselves are "necessary" - simply because the laws themselves are not necessary.

[ETA:

It might then be objected: But a "law" which allowed for such a highly-specific exception for the unique event of Jimmy's dropping a ball would be no law at all.

We could allow this, but then point out that according to the definition of a GCDE, then one of those - a highly-specific one - could have applied so as to change the circumstances of this event and this event alone.

It might then be further objected: But there would then be no underlying physical reason for that GCDE as there is in the case of a lawful event.

To which we could respond that this begs the question: why could there not equally be an underlying "physical reason" for a highly-specific GCDE as for a lawful event?

It might then be objected instead: OK, but what about worlds in which only laws apply, and highly-specific GCDEs simply never do?

To which we could respond in two possible ways:

(1) Again, this begs the question: why could it not be possible that highly-specific GCDEs never apply; in other words, what might make it necessary that they do not, and that only laws ever apply?

(2) Even granting the question-begging at that level: in the context of this discussion on free will that contention would beg the question as to whether our world is one such world. In my view, given some of the very context-dependent and highly-specific anomalies that we discuss on Psience Quest, it is almost certain that our world is not such a world.]

No-one, obviously. The complex layers of abstraction do their work as they've been designed to.

What are you even getting at?

I don't think you've been following the thread. The claim, I believe, is that every event is freely chosen by an agent. There are no events that simply happen out of necessity. So some agent is freely willing each microelectronic event in the chip. There has been some discussion about the possibility of an agent setting up a series of events to happen "automatically."

And some other poor agent is responsible for alpha particle decay.

~~ Paul

The "aboutness" means holding concepts in the mind. Having an ability doesn't mean holding concepts in the mind. As per Putnam's Renewing Philosophy:

Ah, aboutness necessarily includes mind. Okay.

No, b/c then there would be no change. It isn't like the vertical axis of time, where one can make arguments for there being a Beginning in the Past or say there is an infinite regression of past events.

On the horizontal axis, the level of a single event, since we know there is change possible outcomes have to be selected for.

I don't understand. What do you mean by no change? Surely my intentions and subjective feelings change over time. So it's legitimate to ask why/how they do.

~~ Paul

Ah, aboutness necessarily includes mind. Okay.

I don't understand. What do you mean by no change? Surely my intentions and subject feelings change over time. So it's legitimate to ask why/how they do.

~~ Paul

I was referring to the "all the way down" part.

I was referring to the "all the way down" part.

Right, I agree that we probably cannot find whys and hows for the axiomatic stuff at the bottom. But that holds true for physics, too, so I'm not sure why people keep asking for the fundamental causal reasons in physics.

No matter the metaphysical model, there are going to be unexaplainable axiomatic existents and forces and such.

~~ Paul

No-one, obviously. The complex layers of abstraction do their work as they've been designed to.

What are you even getting at?

I don't think you've been following the thread. The claim, I believe, is that every event is freely chosen by an agent. There are no events that simply happen out of necessity. So some agent is freely willing each microelectronic event in the chip. There has been some discussion about the possibility of an agent setting up a series of events to happen "automatically."

And some other poor agent is responsible for alpha particle decay.

~~ Paul

Mental causation doesn't need to mean there is a need to decide an event in every moment, just that at some point a being was involved - for example Aquinas' 5th way has God set the Final Causes of material things at the moment of creation.

But "all causation is mental causation" could just mean, from an Idealist perspective, that everything is conscious or in consciousness. 

So no need for every particle to be a mind unto itself -> That said there are some good arguments for varieties of Panpsychism - given more & more people are seeing Physicalism is intellectually bankrupt (as noted above) + makes life worthless I can see why it is catching on. Though there is that pesky Combination Problem for Bottom Up Panpsychism, it's better than the miracle of something from nothing Sam Harris noted materialism needs. Top Down Panpyschism would work differently (skip to Cosmological Panpsychism section.)

But even there exactly where the causal power lies can vary - a computer circuit doesn't need to have consciousness/agency, it could just be constituted of atomic particles that possess agency. Of course the question comes up why free particles decide to hold into such configurations, but again since Physicalism has Luck as the ultimate reason anything happens one can't be too hard on the Panpsychists...