I'm sure they do. But I don't know how this helps come up with current effects that are anything other than predetermined.
~~ Paul
Half a second to consciousness
- Thread starter Brian_the_bard
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~~ Paul
Because that's what "not determined" means: It means that no prior events are the cause of the indetermined event, so that event is arbitrary with respect to prior events. Again, there may be no random events; they may all be predetermined. But that doesn't help us find libertarian free will. We still need to describe a method of making decisions that does not sound like it is entirely predetermined or entirely random or entirely some combination of those two.
Things may be ultimately stochastic, but not all stochastic processes are uniformly random. The nonuniformity might lead to the apparently deterministic patterns we see.
Let's say nothing is deterministic and random. So all processes are libertarian-processes. Now, aren't you on the hook to explain how libertarian-processes work? If not, then you're just giving up.
It's not just materialist philosophers who have given up. I challenge you to find a coherent description of libertarian free will from any philosopher.
I haven't the slighest notion what "indeterministic but not random/arbitrary" means. If you can explain it, we will have taken a big step forward in this conversation. I do not see how an event can be free of causal precursors yet actually related to something in the past, such as my wants and desires.
If beta decay is not random but related to the agent, then how does the relation work? The relation has to be constructed from events that are not wholly deterministic or random. So here we are back to the original problem. Also, this idea requires that I have some private atomic nucleii hanging around that I can sample when I need to make a decision. Really?
~~ Paul
Max_B
Member
Means nothing to me?
Asserting that everything we experience (which is saturated with acts of free will) is illusory, is about as much use as a scientific explanation as asserting that God made everything (optionally with some help from Jesus and the Holy Ghost!) - so that is why things are as they are!
Sorry Paul - I rushed a response on here and accidentally edited your post - can you edit it back to how it was please!
David
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Max_B
Member
Awww...bless... :-)
S
Sciborg_S_Patel
Why is it arbitrary if it's not predetermined? Why/How do you think a Cause has to determine an Effect?
Where does this non-unformity come from? Why doesn't it dissolve into uniform randomness?
What do you mean by "how libertarian processes" work? The causal power would rest in the agent/unit in question. Also I think you'd have to define what you mean by "work" in this sense?
How does a deterministic process work? How does a random process work?
The takes mentioned in these seem coherent to me? ->
Rosenberg, Consciousness & Causality (Part 1)
The Solution to the Problem of the Freedom of the Will
http://guidetoreality.blogspot.com/2004/12/rosenberg-consciousness-causality-part.html
The Peer-to-Peer Hypothesis and a new theory of free will
The whole man
Process philosophy
How Can I Possibly Be Free?
Time and free will, an essay on the immediate data of consciousness
The Freedom of the Will
Mind, Brain, and Free Will
Philosophy of Mind and the Problem of Free Will in the Light of Quantum Mechanics.
Well I am trying to understand your claim that if something is not determined it must be random. Indeterminism seems to literally mean "not deterministic". That would simply seem to mean that some degree of causal power is given to the agent/unit. To quote William James:
"What does determinism profess? It professes that those parts of the universe already laid down absolutely appoint and decree what the other parts shall be. The future has no ambiguous possibilities hidden in its womb; the part we call the present is compatible with only one totality. Any other future complement than the one fixed from eternity is impossible. The whole is in each and every part, and welds it with the rest into an absolute unity, an iron block, in which there can be no equivocation or shadow of turning.
Indeterminism, on the contrary, says that the parts have a certain amount of loose play on one another, so that the laying down of one of them does not necessarily determine what the others shall be. It admits that possibilities may be in excess of actualities, and that things not yet revealed to our knowledge may really in themselves be ambiguous. Of two alternative futures which we conceive, both may now be really possible; and the one become impossible only at the very moment when the other excludes it by becoming real itself. Indeterminism thus denies the world to be one unbending unit of fact. It says there is a certain ultimate pluralism in it."
Well I've yet to see why one would think this dichotomy of randomness/determinism exists - I consider that the original problem. To quote James again:
"Chance is a purely negative and relative term, giving us no information about that of which it is predicated, except that it happens to be disconnected with something else—not controlled, secured, or necessitated by other things in advance of its own actual presence. What I say is that it tells us nothing about what a thing may be in itself to call it “chance.” All you mean by calling it “chance” is that this is not guaranteed, that it may also fall out otherwise. For the system of other things has no positive hold on the chance-thing. Its origin is in a certain fashion negative: it escapes, and says, Hands off! coming, when it comes, as a free gift, or not at all.
This negativeness, however, and this opacity of the chance-thing when thus considered ab extra, or from the point of view of previous things or distant things, do not preclude its having any amount of positiveness and luminosity from within, and at its own place and moment. All that its chance-character asserts about it is that there is something in it really of its own, something that is not the unconditional property of the whole. If the whole wants this property, the whole must wait till it can get it, if it be a matter of chance. That the universe may actually be a sort of joint-stock society of this sort, in which the sharers have both limited liabilities and limited powers, is of course a simple and conceivable notion."
I don't understand this response. Why would you, as a being, require private atomic nucleii? My point was we simply don't know what the causal drive of random decay is and it could, in fact, include consciousness.
Because that's the definition of effect. But don't you grow weary of questioning the definitions of words? Why don't you offer up a description of the sort of decision you're looking for?
I have no idea.
I agree that the agent is the cause. Now, how does the agent cause something in a way that is not wholly predetermined or arbitrary? By "how does it work" I'm asking for an explanation of how the agent makes a libertarian-decision.
A deterministic process works by a sequence of causes and effects such that the effects are determined by the causes in a completely predictable way. A random process is an event with no cause, so that the event is arbitrary with respect to previous events.
Could you pick one and summarize it?
Huh? Why are you separating the agent from the rest of the system? You have to be careful not to separate the agent and then endow it with some libertarian powers that remain unspecified.
By what process does the second alternative become real while the first does not?
You will have to explain what you think James is saying here, because his "chance" sounds like "random" to me. As far as I can tell, he offers no explanation for how chance works.
You mean some conscious agent is deciding which nucleii should decay? Okay, fair enough. How does that agent decide?
~~ Paul
S
Sciborg_S_Patel
Simply saying "that's the definition" isn't really an explanation. The reason I keep questioning the definitions is because so far it seems the idea that things *must* be either deterministic or random is nothing but a faith-based assertion rather than a logical conclusion.
I've asked for a proof but if I missed it please link back to it - thanks! If IIRC, and no real proof was ever provided, perhaps start with a set of states at time T1 and explain how causation works to get us the set of states at T2 via a set of causes C = {c1, c2, c3....}?
Okay, seems like you're saying the universe is completely arbitrary, and that all seeming order would collapse at any moment...is that right? Or does something hold the universe in place?
Why can't it work because free-will agents have causal power? If not from the agent, where is the actual causal power that leads to the effect coming from?
Not sure what a "libertarian-decison" is? Can you contrast this with other kinds of decisions?
Those just seem like definitions, not explanations for how they work -> What holds a deterministic process across multiple instances of measurement - why doesn't this process ever vary? On the flip side, how can something happen randomly, for no sufficient reason at all?
They rest on questions of causality, so we'd just get back to where we are now. Additionally as I've said before free will discussions don't go anywhere because different sides are coming in with different ideas about causation itself so better to talk about causality before worrying about free will.
I still don't understand what this system is or how its powers over cause and effect were specificed. It seemed earlier you think there are stochastic processes that happen for no reason at all and only seem to mimic deterministic processes we infer inductively? That hardly seems like a defined system?
It seems to me that would depend on the model of causality, not sure what model James ascribed to or if he had settled on one.
How do you think it happens that one alternative is realized? Perhaps this might give me a better understanding of how you think causation works.
But your explanation was that it was arbitrary, and it simply works for no reason at all? Unless you have a way that chance works which wasn't provided?
James, it seems to me, is saying chance is just a word used when causal power is centered in the agent.
I was saying it's simply a possibility, not that it was definite, that a conscious agent was involved.
As for how it would depend on what the agent involved was - A Scholastic following Thomas Aquinas might say a Prime Mover would direct the telos of the atoms, an Idealist might say Consciousness is fundamental even over time and causation so the mental attributes of the atom suffice to direct it's seemingly arbitrary aspects, a Process Philosopher following Whitehead would say the atoms are Occasions of Experience that grasp/receive the past and then determine via final causation the seemingly arbitrary aspects....I'm sure there are more metaphysical models I've not mentioned...
But really all of this follows after the establishment of a metaphysical model of causation so we should worry about that first.
Fine, let's go with that. Now, can you offer an explanation of the sort of decision-making process you're talking about?
(It seems logical to me that an event that is not influenced in any way by precursor events must be completely arbitrary (random), without any connection to those events. I cannot conceive of how an uncaused event can be related to previous events. But, yet again, I await enlightenment.)
I don't know how arbitrary it is. But if the apparent order comes out of skewed stochastic probabilities, I'm not sure why the universe might collapse at any moment.
I'm happy to agree that agents have causal power. What does this have to do with libertarian decision making? Do "agents" have some ability that "other matter" does not have?
A libertarian decision must involve an agent making a decision by some method other than (a) a prespecified, fixed flowchart guided by past events, and (b) sampling a source of bits that is completely unrelated to the agent. A libertarian decision is, by definition, incompatible with a deterministic universe. Furthermore, no libertarian would be satisfied with purely arbitrary decisions.
It is realized either by a deterministic sequence of events that lead inexorably to that decision, or because the decision is random, or some combination.
I'm going to elide some of your comments here, because, as usual, the statement/response list gets so long that we lose the point of the conversation. Not your fault, it just happens.
A set of events deterministically cause another event. Or an event occurs without cause. I have nothing else to offer, except to continue to plea for a suggestion from you. I am perfectly happy if you reject my two models while giving yours.
~~ Paul
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Stephen Wright
New
Agents can make focused changes to the environment through enforcing their will. Their will being contextual and specific to a target state that the agent predicts from his own PoV. I want to answer Paul with specifics of how this is measurable and is at the least quasi-empirical as an information process. Whitehead makes a strong suggestion of how Actual Occasions and agent's minds interact in the conclusion to his Gifford Lectures.
http://www.giffordlectures.org/lect...last_value&sort_order=ASC&page=11&AuthorID=16
What did he say about it?
I don't see how this helps. One way or the other, the agent has to make a decision, resulting in a desire/will that they want to enforce. How does the agent make this decision?
Is it possible you folks are picturing something special about an "agent" that I am not?
~~ Paul
Stephen Wright
New
Look - I have no privilege in this discussion, but can back my statements with source material.
Let's start by sorting that which is semantic opinion and/or metaphysical speculation -- from that which is measurable by scientific methods. Physical processes yield results that for the most part are stochastic, meaning that there is some outlying data to 100% anything. Chemical processes are subject to equilibrium effects where reactions run to a near completion with some incomplete molecular states. Observation of mechanical process always have measurements with margins of error. Yet - we can apply an abstract quality to some events (think Spinoza) and say we can predict very accurately physicality. Very accurate is not deterministic, a term of metaphysics.
Another problem occurs when a different standard is applied to the term random linking it to metaphysical determinism . Random is appropriately used between variables and the variables need be linked to their units of measure and backed by empirical facts of observation of nature. Something is not abstractly "random" as a material property but is identified by specific variables who do not have measured correlation and hence are unpredictable. Many natural events may be predictable and patterned by deep complexity, and as we have better and better scientific models of things, events and processes these patterns modeled. All events come from a prior SoA (state of affairs) and to try and say any event is not caused by its prior state is not science from empirical observation - but is metaphysical bluster.
Agents using their information processing can change real world probabilities by making mental or physical models and predict future states according to desires. Since agents have self-reference they can change real-world probabilities before action. Good grief, many-worlds interpretation in physics takes this so seriously that it is asserted that an agent choosing between two possible choices actually makes two realities and splits one universe into two. (I am not a believer in a many-worlds view of physics.)
I would describe this interaction with real-world probabilities as an agent creating two or more information objects and then using will or desire to enforce one. The agent itself creates degrees of freedom from this process in relation to its ability to structure information as to predictable future events. These degrees of freedom are measurable.
S
Sciborg_S_Patel
I would agree that events are likely caused by a prior SoA - at least on the functional level of experienced reality so that there are no wholly arbitrary events - though I would disagree that they are determined by them. I think we're in agreement there if we're both seeking to be successors of Whitehead?
(I'm not fully sold on the necessity of "prior", leaving some room for retrocausation, though I think retrocausality is so un-parsimonious it beggars belief.)
My suspicion is that assertions of MWI involve poor conceptions of causality and adherence to materialism...reminds me of a quote by Richard Lewontin:
I actually disagree that believing in God makes one liable to believe in anything. In fact I suspect the opposite is true - believing in God is why one thinks the regularities of nature cannot be ruptured. [For more on this see Nancy Cartwright's No God, No Laws]
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Stephen Wright
New
Thanks for the thoughtful response. My position is not to "picture"; but to measure. We can measure agents activity as physical transformation and track the incoming material consumed and the output of energetic actions. My "one-trick-pony" response is to balance that well-formed process model with a complimentary and parallel model of - information in and information out - of agents. Further, I ignore the overdone belief in consciousness - and point to the measurables of understanding, a specific functionality. Decisions and choices are made through an understanding of the target state, in the mind of an agent.
If I am pushing something special about agents, it is that understanding is the key process. And I will draw a direct line to integrated information as an indication of how understanding can be measured. I hope you push me on this!.
I am going to hold back my Whitehead quote for now, as it may lead us away from these points.
S
Sciborg_S_Patel
I would like to see this quote please.
S
Sciborg_S_Patel
Rather I am trying to understand why any process must fall under determinism or randomness. The latter, randomness, seems illogical as it claims the result is partially happening for no reason whatsoever.
But even a "deterministic" process seems to be just as arbitrary, as it's unclear what would ensure the consistency necessary to have consistent results long enough believe a process is deterministic. That things happen consistently is just as arbitrary as things happening for no reason at all.
I also don't see why causing an event is the same as wholly determining the effect. How does the cause bind the effect?
So it seems when someone says all events are deterministic/random that they are proposing a reality where everything is arbitrary and thus there is no real binding on causal chains. But surely in such an absurd reality free will is hardly a problem at all?
I have no idea why you think agents have anything to do with Many Worlds. Meanwhile, if I read you correctly, you have just said that agents can change probabilities but only deterministically.
But apparently this will/desire is deterministic.
If I've misunderstood you, please elaborate.
~~ Paul
Well, that's what our observations of the universe seem to indicate. We have absolutely no evidence that individual beta decay is anything other than completely arbitrary. The only pattern is the half-life of groups of particles.
Really? So the fact that my computer computes for years completely deterministically is the same as if its electronics did arbitrary things? If we are going to adopt the philosophical position that these are the same thing, then I daresay the question of free will becomes irrelevant.
I have no idea. All I can offer is the laws of physics that do quite a good job of predicting what is going to happen when a set of causes produce an effect, and also quite a good job of specifying the quantum behaviors of particles and groups of particles.
I'd say it is entirely problematical. If you don't distinguish random results from predictable/desired results, the question of free will is moot.
For the nth time, I suggest that you simply reject my notions of determinism and randomness and offer up a description of how free will might work. I think it's pretty clear now that we aren't going to agree on those two concepts.
~~ Paul