Neuroscience and free will

Example, this post is itself either #672 (logged out) or #684 (logged in) for me. Its URL is: https://psiencequest.net/forums/thread-n...0#pid26720

Yup, I learned my lesson. I'll use links.

~~ Paul

Sorry, are you saying you agree with me that Physicalism has no way to rescue human achievement & moral responsibility?

Thus all moral people should oppose Physicalism correct?

If by "rescue" you mean find some sort of indeterministic means of making free decisions, then no, physicalism doesn't have that. If you mean we can simply decide what we mean by meaning, achievement, and responsibility, then that is what we already do.

One cannot oppose physicalism. One can only look at the evidence and draw a tentative conclusion. Physicalism is not a political stance, where being against it can actually change things. Indeterminism is not a political stance, where being for it can actually make it true.

~~ Paul

You've repeated this multiple times, so I'm guessing it is relevant/crucial in understanding what you mean?

Can you describe more fully in what way Inner Cause is involved with a brick going through a window?

Something about the Window has to be receptive to the Brick + Momentum.

So we have a singular decision/selection which is non-composite. What about that makes it "free"?

Well the question was "How could free will be possible?" without taking it as a brute fact completely in separation from the rest of causality. But all causality depends on a particular outcome out of the varied possible outcomes being selected. And the only kind of possibility selector that at least seems to be fundamental is conscious decision making. (And all the other stuff in the thread about causality.)

My understanding of the question was the idea that in some metaphysical picture can someone account for free will. Whether that picture aligns with this world I assume is what the talk of Psi, NDEs, Philosophy, and so on that goes in the forum is about. Or all the varied books that have been written on the subject. I am not claiming that there is nothing more that could be said, just providing a basic sketch of fitting free will into a metaphysical picture. I don't pretend to do justice to all the spilled ink and spilled pixels, that seems to go beyond what one could do in a forum.

But I agree that in some pictures, like Physicalism, free will doesn't exist and human life is completely worthless since there is no way to rescue achievements or moral responsibility.

This is a very strange perception of physical law. I don't think anything is beholden to our poor attempts at modeling the breaking of symmetry.

Sorry, can you expand on this. You seem to be saying that our attempts don't speak to what actually goes on in nature, and to some extent I would agree - we can claim there are laws but they are just descriptions/assumptions of patterns.

But I think Laird and Paul already came to that conclusion?

If by "rescue" you mean find some sort of indeterministic means of making free decisions, then no, physicalism doesn't have that. If you mean we can simply decide what we mean by meaning, achievement, and responsibility, then that is what we already do.

One cannot oppose physicalism. One can only look at the evidence and draw a tentative conclusion. Physicalism is not a political stance, where being against it can actually change things. Indeterminism is not a political stance, where being for it can actually make it true.

~~ Paul

So those promoting Physicalism want people to pretend there is human responsibility and human achievement, while in reality everyone should also accept it's just a game of pretend?

It seems one can oppose Physicalism by supporting even the idea free will is something special as one brute fact like other brute facts Physicalists are happy to take on.

Basically support parapsychology, theistic and immaterialist philoosphy, intelligent design, and all the other avenues seeking to show mental causation.

I'd take you back to Nima's lecture... at 52:33 (so you've missed 52 minutes), where he's trying to eliminate virtual particles...



They have discovered some *very* simple physical rules to construct diagrams using black and white vertices that can replace the virtual particles in Feynman diagrams... but at 54:30, what's crucial, is that these black and white vertices cannot be given a local interpretation using points in spacetime... but arise from something else which is averaged over all of spacetime.

A few minutes later, he shows how mathematicians have come up with the same solution on their own, without knowing anything about what Nima and his colleagues were working on.

Basically, spacetime *and* quantum mechanics can emerge from much more primitive rules (calculations), which process information, that are directly related to the real world, these new rules are not some toy model, they are being used right now to solve problems in the real world.

I suppose I'm trying to get people to think of spacetime as something which is a result of a calculation, your calculation (your spacetime frame of reference) of shared information (spacetime individuals), and matching information (the only information which can be shared with you).

Not sure if that helps?

I haven't watched the video yet but when you say "result of a calculation" do you mean there is someone or something actually doing calculations, or rather there is a process we can try model via calculation?

Or does my question show my utter lack of understanding?

So those promoting Physicalism want people to pretend there is human responsibility and human achievement, while in reality everyone should also accept it's just a game of pretend?

This question deserves its own thread IMO.  I've never been able to square the materialist/physicalist position on this question.

This question deserves its own thread IMO.  I've never been able to square the materialist/physicalist position on this question.

Well the thread was originally about Neuroscience lol...

I'd just watch the lecture... its' fab.

My assumption was that it is an individuals frame of reference... in this case my frame of reference (or yours, or somebody elses etc.), I'm guessing it's always an individuals frame of reference - but not certain. 'Individual' may be interchanged with 'system'. So a systems frame of reference, might be less weighed down with the baggage that comes from using 'individual'. I guess a system being something in spacetime that can make transformations (keep some things fixed, whilst moving other things).

Most of the time on here, people talk about observations of things, as if the things are separate from their observation of them... but really we must be talking about an individuals frame of reference.

Gotcha, will watch the lecture and come back to you.

Quick question re: reference frames - have you been following any of the stuff with Rovelli's Relation Interpretation or Chris Fuch's QBism?