The Solution to the Problem of the Freedom of the Will

Would it matter who has the will, in regard to it being "free"?
If the spirit's will is free then would not also the human's will be free, as they are effectively one and the same.

For something to be free or indetermined it specifies that it is not caused by anything, other than the abstract "random" or "freedom".

Surely a spirit's will is based on things around it as anything else.

The human will is an aspect or quality of human consciousness and mind. With the dualism philosophy of mind, mind is ultimately of the spirit not the physical neurons of the brain, and as spirit it interacts with the physical through the brain. Then the nature of the human will is really the nature of the human spirit. But we don't understand the nature of spirit - its essence may be incomprehensible to humans - so we don't understand the nature of "human will", and its essence also may be incomprehensible to humans.

Since spirit and its aspect will are not a substance visualizable as akin to physical matter, the must-be-either-causally-deterministic-or-causally-indeterministic (random) conundrum, which derives from the known behavior and properties of physical matter in space-time, may not apply to the human will. The human will, sentient volition, may be an undefinable essence - part of the unknowable essence of consciousness and not limited in this way.

From The Solution to the Problem of the Freedom of the Will:



I think this kind of reasoning ignores the crux of the matter, which is whether mind-brain materialism itself is truth or is not the truth. If, as many members of this forum believe, the human consciousness and mind are something other than one and the same as brain neurons and/or their activities (in particular, substance or interactionist dualism), then freedom of the will becomes actually freedom of the spirit or soul that interacts with the physical world through the brain. We know little or nothing of the true nature of spirit or soul, so we know little or nothing of whether the determinism versus indeterminism conundrum even applies to the inherent nature of spirit. Freedom of the will may be an inherent property of it, and fundamentally incomprehensible to humans.

But the incompleteness of the determinist's argument holds, regardless of whether one is materialist or immaterialist.

The argument lies in the question of causal necessity, versus the cause as disposition that the paper sees in the rest of reality. The "flip" of the argument would be the Scholastic argument the theist Feser makes, that God ensures the causal regularity of the natural as Prime Mover but grants the human special dispensation by making humanity in God's image.

The problem for the determinist is the inability to explain causation at the root, whether they are materialists or immaterialists.

But the incompleteness of the determinist's argument holds, regardless of whether one is materialist or immaterialist.

The argument lies in the question of causal necessity, versus the cause as disposition that the paper sees in the rest of reality. The "flip" of the argument would be the Scholastic argument the theist Feser makes, that God ensures the causal regularity of the natural as Prime Mover but grants the human special dispensation by making humanity in God's image.

The problem for the determinist is the inability to explain causation at the root, whether they are materialists or immaterialists.

My position is that if interactionist dualism is the truth, one implication of that is that the determinism vs. indeterminism debate is probably irrelevant to the issue of the freedom of the will. Then the free will that we instinctively believe ourselves to have is real and is probably one aspect of the unknowable essence of our spirit nature. This seems to have some similarity to the Scholastic argument you describe. The determinist's inability to explain causation seems to me to be another (though related) issue.  

By the way, Dupre's argument that most macroscopic events are not causally complete seems wrong to me - it would throw out a couple of centuries of experimentalism in the hard sciences, where innumerable parts of nature have been shown to be in fact causally complete mechanisms. He focuses almost entirely on the regularity and reliability of human-made machines, and claims that the machine-like causal regularity of natural mechanisms discovered by experiments is really just due to the human invention of the instrumental machines themselves. I think this is mistaken. This is shown by just a short look at the history of molecular biology in the growing understanding of the cell's many intricate molecular machines (like the bacterial flagellum). More importantly, Dupre's essay doesn't really supply a solution to the problem of the freedom of the will, as claimed in his title. He doesn't seem to really indentify precisely what the other ingredient is (is it the usually assumed randomness, or if not, what?), if macroscopic events are not causally complete.

My position is that if interactionist dualism is the truth, one implication of that is that the determinism vs. indeterminism debate is probably irrelevant to the issue of the freedom of the will. Then the free will that we instinctively believe ourselves to have is real and is probably one aspect of the unknowable essence of our spirit nature. This seems to have some similarity to the Scholastic argument you describe. The determinist's inability to explain causation seems to me to be another (though related) issue.  

By the way, Dupre's argument that most macroscopic events are not causally complete seems wrong to me - it would throw out a couple of centuries of experimentalism in the hard sciences, where innumerable parts of nature have been shown to be in fact causally complete mechanisms. He focuses almost entirely on the regularity and reliability of human-made machines, and claims that the machine-like causal regularity of natural mechanisms discovered by experiments is really just due to the human invention of the instrumental machines themselves. I think this is mistaken. This is shown by just a short look at the history of molecular biology in the growing understanding of the cell's many intricate molecular machines (like the bacterial flagellum). More importantly, Dupre's essay doesn't really supply a solution to the problem of the freedom of the will, as claimed in his title. He doesn't seem to really indentify precisely what the other ingredient is (is it the usually assumed randomness, or if not, what?), if macroscopic events are not causally complete.

Well Dupre admits in the paper he doesn't have a solution. Perhaps he's the Father of Clickbait.   

I'd agree there's something missing in his argument when he overlooks the machinery of hte cell, but I think Dupre's way of conducting arguments goes against our usual thinking about causation. It seems to me what he is attempting to say regarding causation in the natural world is a combination of a few arguments:

- If the underlying micro is random, then in a reductionist metaphysics the macro's predictability is lucky happenstance. 

- When we identify a cause we are not talking about something is inherently binding, but rather talking about something that disposes outcomes. 

- The natural world has a great deal of unpredictability. We use human structures to make life more predictable for ourselves.

- Causal completeness would be the assurance that when something happens, nothing else could've happened.

That said I do agree that Dupre's paper is an opening salvo, not a "solution" in actuality. I do think he starts at the right place, looking at causation beneath the level of the human agent.

...

- The natural world has a great deal of unpredictability. We use human structures to make life more predictable for ourselves.

- Causal completeness would be the assurance that when something happens, nothing else could've happened.

...

To me "predicting" is something humans do, with the help of their logic. Nothing in this world get predicted unless a human choose to do so. "Unpredictability" is simply a realisation that we can't predict a certain thing, because we don't know how to.

Well Dupre admits in the paper he doesn't have a solution. Perhaps he's the Father of Clickbait.   

I'd agree there's something missing in his argument when he overlooks the machinery of hte cell, but I think Dupre's way of conducting arguments goes against our usual thinking about causation. It seems to me what he is attempting to say regarding causation in the natural world is a combination of a few arguments:

- If the underlying micro is random, then in a reductionist metaphysics the macro's predictability is lucky happenstance. 

- When we identify a cause we are not talking about something is inherently binding, but rather talking about something that disposes outcomes. 

- The natural world has a great deal of unpredictability. We use human structures to make life more predictable for ourselves.

- Causal completeness would be the assurance that when something happens, nothing else could've happened.

That said I do agree that Dupre's paper is an opening salvo, not a "solution" in actuality. I do think he starts at the right place, looking at causation beneath the level of the human agent.

"If the underlying micro is random, then in a reductionist metaphysics the macro's predictability is lucky happenstance."

     Two centuries of research in the hard sciences seems to conflict with this assertion of Dupre's. 

"When we identify a cause we are not talking about something is inherently binding, but rather talking about something that disposes outcomes."

     Ditto

"The natural world has a great deal of unpredictability. We use human structures to make life more predictable for ourselves."

     True, but I think this is at least partly because in some cases the actual detailed macroscopic mechanisms are not understood and/or are due to phenomena that haven't been examined          and measured through instrumentation. There may be some macroscopic phenomena that are inherently unpredictable because they are inherently chaotic. 

"Causal completeness would be the assurance that when something happens, nothing else could've happened."

    I think that causal completeness defined this way is true for most macroscopic mechanisms, but not consciousness.

"But the exercise of those powers, though obviously influenced by the circumstances I perceive myself to be in, ultimately depends on an autonomous decision-making process. Once we see causal order as something special rather than something universal, there is no obstacle to seeing the human will as an autonomous source of such order."

I don't believe he addresses the nagging question of how this (granted) autonomous human will makes decisions.

~~ Paul

"But the exercise of those powers, though obviously influenced by the circumstances I perceive myself to be in, ultimately depends on an autonomous decision-making process. Once we see causal order as something special rather than something universal, there is no obstacle to seeing the human will as an autonomous source of such order."

I don't believe he addresses the nagging question of how this (granted) autonomous human will makes decisions.

~~ Paul

Doesn't this just back to your insistence that having a flow chart of decision making somehow proves determinism (with potential randomness)? You said you had no proof of a randomness/deterministic dichotomy as I recall, nor did you have any real explanation for causation or why the regularities of physics don't change.

So it's not clear to me what kind of "how" you want, as if the only "how" you accept is in accordance with a deterministic/random dichotomy then it seems to me that would be begging the question?

This seems related to the issue of free will and I find it interesting:

Sciborg posted an intriguing cosmic virtual reality simulation hypothesis recently, one created by philosopher Marcus Arvan, at http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files...P_Hypo.pdf . Arvan proposes that we are living in the functional equivalent of a peer-to-peer (P2P) networked computer simulation. This hypothesis is well argued. In his exposition he describes how the P2P Hypothesis explains the existence of almost all of the most puzzling features of our world. Beyond this he is making a number of claims about the nature of reality.

Along with quantum mechanical phenomena, one of these features explained by the hypothesis is our experience of ourselves as having free will despite our experiencing the physical world as apparently causally closed under the laws of physics. This puzzling feature is presently not really understood, so that materialists claim there is no free will - they claim it is just an illusion.

Arvan takes the position that the universe actually is causally closed in its own simulation reference frame, but that human consciousness is ultimately a user or participator in the simulation, existing outside it and truly free. Of course there are other philosophical arguments for free will. I think this one may be at least in the right direction.

He uses the popular videogame Halo as a simplified analogy. 

"Halo P2P interactive simulation scientists and philosophers would have the sneaking suspicion – just as we do – that somehow they have “free will” even though, from measuring their physical reality, they would see no “room” for freedom of choice in their physical laws. Halo Scientists would observe their simulation’s physical laws as completely closed. They would, as we have already seen, develop probabilistic laws to explain their physical reality, and they would think – just as we do – that there is no room for minds to make free choices, since truly free choices would have to break the probabilistic laws of physics. And yet Halo Scientists and Philosophers would probably still feel – deep in their bones – that they can make truly free choices.

And both answers would be right. Let me explain. When one plays a game of Halo online, one’s free choices in the frame-of-reference outside of the simulation – one’s joystick movements as the game’s “user” – generates an unbroken series of events within the simulation. Once a game is complete, one can go back, rewind it to the beginning, and watch all of the events transpire inexorably from start to finish. Notice what this means. From the perspective of observers within the simulation, their laws of nature are closed. Everything that happens will look like it “must” happen under their laws of physics. But this is only true from their frame-of-reference.

The fact is, in a higher frame-of-reference – the reference frame of the user interacting with the simulation from the outside – choices completely undetermined by the physics of the simulation (the choices of the “user”) give rise to the appearance of complete causal closure within the simulation. Observers within a P2P simulation really are free; it just necessarily appears from the physics of their reference-frame as though they are not. But of course this, plausibly, seems to be our situation. When I act I experience myself as making free choices. But it’s hard to see how this can be given the physics of our world (where everything follows from the quantum wave-function). The P2P hypothesis explains how both can be true. We are free-relative-to-a-higher-reference-frame but not-free-relative-to-our-reference-frame."

Doesn't this just back to your insistence that having a flow chart of decision making somehow proves determinism (with potential randomness)? You said you had no proof of a randomness/deterministic dichotomy as I recall, nor did you have any real explanation for causation or why the regularities of physics don't change.

So it's not clear to me what kind of "how" you want, as if the only "how" you accept is in accordance with a deterministic/random dichotomy then it seems to me that would be begging the question?

I haven't heard even the slightest attempt at a how. It's almost as if the inability to explain how it might work is the very thing that makes people believe it is indeterministic and free (yet somehow related to my wants and desires). If you cannot give a hint of an example of making such a decision, why would you choose to believe there is such a thing?

As far as a proof that random = not deterministic, I still take that as the definition of random. Again, until someone can explain how something can be not determined yet also not completely arbitrary, why would I abandon that definition? However, as I've said, I'm happy to suspend that definition for purposes of discussion. Then we are back to what I said in the preceding paragraph.

~~ Paul