Quantum Mechanics and Determinism?

[Dooga Blackrazor]

Is quantum mechanics deterministic? It argues that probabilistic events occur, does it not? However, if these events occur, couldn't one say that the result of a probabilistic event was not caused? If it was caused, it would be determined and not probabilistic, would it not? Given this assumption, does quantum mechanics believe in randomness? If randomness is the absence of causation, how can one argue logically that something can happen without giving a causation?

Thanks,

Very Confused

 

[selfAdjoint]

Is quantum mechanics deterministic? It argues that probabilistic events occur, does it not? However, if these events occur, couldn't one say that the result of a probabilistic event was not caused? If it was caused, it would be determined and not probabilistic, would it not? Given this assumption, does quantum mechanics believe in randomness? If randomness is the absence of causation, how can one argue logically that something can happen without giving a causation?

Thanks,

Very Confused

In a quantum interaction SOMETHING is caused. The probability is of what particular thing that is.

 

[Dooga Blackrazor]

Ok, that helps. However, how can something be caused to have more than one possible cause? Shouldn't the variables ultimately be predictable?

Here is an example of what I mean. There is a probability of 50% that either A or B will be the result. However, A is the resultant. Therefore, A becomes the cause. However, the fact that A is the cause, consequently ddue to causation, must have a cause itself.

If that cause is probability, what is the cause or probability? If probability has a cause, isn't the resultant or probabalistic events really the result of a deterministic universe?

In short, I am trying to reconcile hard determinism with quantum mechanics as Einstein (for a reason I am unsure of) and others seem to say they cannot be combined.

 

[Mickey]

The cause of quantum probability is still a fringe area of study and has many controversial ideas. One such controversial idea is that probabilities are Bayesian, or that they are caused by other probabilities.

That may not be immediately satisfying, so perhaps what you're looking for is an interpretation of probability itself and what it means. Bayes defined probability as a "degree to which a person believes a proposition."

So the cause of quantum probability, according to Bayes, would be something in nature that causes a person to have that degree of belief in a proposed measured value in quantum mechanics.

 

[Tournesol]

Necessary and Sufficient Causation

Determinists often claim 'everything has a cause' as both a self-evident principle, and as one which has significant philosophical import. However, the truth of the latter depends, as philosophical questions tend to, one what one means by 'cause'. Sufficient cause: If A, then B. A's cannot occur without B's following on. A's are sufficient to cause B's. But something else, A* could also cause B. Necessary Cause: If B, then A. If B has occured, A must have occured. A is necessary for B. Peter D Jones 13/01/02

Causation and Explanation

What caused Smith's death ? According to the coroner, the arsenic he ingested. According to the counsel for the prosecution, his wife. The accounts do not contradict each other, they simply reflect different areas of concern. What causes something is not simply given, it depends on what we are interested in.

Peter D Jones 08/09/05
Trigger And Background Causes

We commonly say that a fire was caused by a dropped match, but that is far from being the one and only cause involved; fires,for instance do not start without oxygen. That sort of consideration is of little interest for many purposes; what is of interest is what isunusual, what is changed, not background conditions that never vary. However, this rule often does not apply to historical or social situations. What is of interest is not so much what triggered a riot, but what led up to it. The assassin of Archduke Ferdinand does not bear the brunt of responsibility for WWI.

Peter D Jones 08/09/05
Causality And Corelation
"Correlation is not causality" is mantra taught to all scientists, sometimes to the point where they cease to believe in causality at all. The problem is that if A is correlated with B it could be that A causes B, B causes A, or both are caused by something else, C. Often the gap is filled in by prejudice. According to the theory of spontaneous generation, decay causes maggots to appear. To the moder understanding, it is the action of organisms that causes decay.

Strict And Probablistic Causation
In the present day we have good reason to think of causation as probablistic, as influenceing without determining completely, as in phrases like 'smoking causes cancer', which means 'smoking makes cancer more likely', not '100% of everybody who smokes will get cancer'. If causality really is probablistic, then it is quite prossible to derive causal laws empirically by noting that repeated correlations of events, that events of type B tend to follow on events of type A, what are called 'empirical laws' in science.

Adherents of the strict version of causality, who believe that for a cause to be a cause it must necessitate its effects, often say that in the case of probablistic causality it is only lack of fine-grained information about the details of a physical situation that causes the appearance of merely probalistic causation. This is not a claim about what probablistic causation means, since probablistic causation is equally well understood by people who don't believe in hidden determining factors. It is not an empirical fact either, since, by definition, hidden determining factors are not apparent. It can hardly be claimed as something that can be argued for logically either, since arguments for strict determinism need to refute non-strict, probabilistic causation, and cannot do that without appealing, in a vicious circle, to the very assumption of underlying determinism in question.

Peter D Jones 13/01/02
Natural And Agentive Causation.

Natural causation seeks to bring all events under a set of universal laws. Agentive causation appeals to the irreducible individuality of agents.

Natural causation works from the past to the future. Agentive causation is puposive and works, concpetually at least towards the future.

Natural causation is factual. Agentive causation is evaluative.

Natural causation is external -- the cause of an event is always outside it. Agentive causation is internal -- agents are self-determining.

Peter D Jones 08/09/05
Occurrent and Metaphysical Causation

(From "A Defense of Emergent Downward Causation" by Teed Rockwell)

"I am going to refer to this common sense concept of causality as occurrent causality, and I want to distinguish it from what I will call metaphysical causality. When I refer to the metaphysical cause of an event, I mean everything in the universe that was responsible for that event taking place, whether anyone knew about it, or was able to have any control of it. A metaphysical cause, unlike a occurrent cause, cannot be described with a single sentence. But it is ontologically more fundamental, because it is less dependent on particular perspectives and projects than is occurrent causality."

Implementational and Higher-Level Causation

In the same way that causally relevant factors sink into the background as far as "occurrent" or "trigger" causation, so there is a class of systems in which the "implementation" or "hardware" sinks into the background compared to a high-level functional description. Computers are one example of such a system; to know what a computer will do under certain cicumstances, you only need to know how it is programmed. There is a sense in which what is going on is really being done by the hardware, and in which the software is a "mere abstract description" of the hardware. However, from the point of view of Occurent Causation, what is of interest is compact descriptions bringing out salient features of the situation, features which are likely to change, and changes in which are likely to make a difference. A "software" or "abstract" or "high level" description is able to fulfil those criteria admirably.

And what of the mind ? Even if (token-token) identity is true, even if mental states have no real existence of their own, they are still suitable to feature in causal explanations. We might think that the total physical state is the "real" cause, but we never actually give explanations in terms of real, metaphysical casuation -- there is just too much of it. Moreover, the apparent falsehood of type-type identity (ie the idea that there is no straightforward relationship between a type of mental state, such as anger, or believing oslo is the capital of Sweden, and a type of brain-state) reinforces the explanatory relevance -- and hence the occurent-causal relevance -- of mental states. We can confidently say that John would have behaved differently if his mental state had been different. We cannot confidently say that he would have behaved differently if his brain-state had been different, because considerations of anti-parochialism impell us to believe that there is more than one way of implementing an "angry" state, and therefore the different brain state might be *another* "angry" state. Peter D Jones 22/11/05

1

 

[Q_Goest]

selfAdjoint said: In a quantum interaction SOMETHING is caused. The probability is of what particular thing that is.

By that, do you mean that every event is created by a preceding cause as in "cause and effect"?

What is the most commonly accepted understanding of radioactive decay? Is radioactive decay:
1. Caused by some prior indeterministic event.
2. Caused by some prior deterministic, yet unknowable event.
3. Not caused by any event, and only the probability of the event occurring is knowable.

 

[Q_Goest]

Tournsel, thanks for the post, that's a nice review of causation.

In the past, I've generally called such causes as "smoking causes cancer" or "the reduction of oil and higher demand caused prices to increase" as loose causal relationships. Here, I believe you've defined such things as a "trigger" or "background cause".

On the other hand, I've also generally defined "strict causal relationship" as those where an effect is directly initiated from a cause and are governed by physical law. Further, those physical laws are essentially determinate and calculable at a classical level. For example, the flow of air around an aircraft wing and the wing's response (often called "wing flutter") can be accurately determined using a combination of computational fluid dynamics and finite element analysis applied to the structure. Granted, the phenomena may have some exceedingly slight and from the perspective of an engineer, insignificant differences which one might suggest are the result of the fact we are modeling molecular level interactions at the classical level. But regardless of this fact, we can suggest these types of interactions are true cause and effect or "strict" cause and effect relationships. Much more strict may be the operation of a computer which has the ability to mask any minor deviations by having set limits as to the operation of its individual parts.

What then would you call these types of causal relationships? Are you saying these are "natural and agentive causation"? Do you have any other references for such definitions, something in the published literature?

 

[moving finger]

What caused Smith's death ? According to the coroner, the arsenic he ingested. According to the counsel for the prosecution, his wife. The accounts do not contradict each other, they simply reflect different areas of concern. What causes something is not simply given, it depends on what we are interested in.

This simply reflects macroscopic indeterminability in cause and effect. What we call "causation" at the macroscopic level is very often nothing more than a (less than 100%) correlation between states.

We commonly say that a fire was caused by a dropped match, but that is far from being the one and only cause involved; fires,for instance do not start without oxygen. That sort of consideration is of little interest for many purposes; what is of interest is what isunusual, what is changed, not background conditions that never vary. However, this rule often does not apply to historical or social situations. What is of interest is not so much what triggered a riot, but what led up to it. The assassin of Archduke Ferdinand does not bear the brunt of responsibility for WWI.

Again, because macroscopic observations of "causation" are often no more than correlations rather than strict causation in the microphysical sense.

"Correlation is not causality" is mantra taught to all scientists, sometimes to the point where they cease to believe in causality at all. The problem is that if A is correlated with B it could be that A causes B, B causes A, or both are caused by something else, C. Often the gap is filled in by prejudice. According to the theory of spontaneous generation, decay causes maggots to appear. To the moder understanding, it is the action of organisms that causes decay.

The problem, as you have highlighted, is in delineating simple correlation from strict causation.

In the present day we have good reason to think of causation as probablistic, as influenceing without determining completely, as in phrases like 'smoking causes cancer', which means 'smoking makes cancer more likely', not '100% of everybody who smokes will get cancer'.

It does not follow from this macroscopic observation that causation itself is probabilistic. I would argue that we have no more reason to think causation is probabilistic than to think it strictly deterministic.

If causality really is probablistic, then it is quite prossible to derive causal laws empirically by noting that repeated correlations of events, that events of type B tend to follow on events of type A, what are called 'empirical laws' in science.

That's a big "if".

arguments for strict determinism need to refute non-strict, probabilistic causation, and cannot do that without appealing, in a vicious circle, to the very assumption of underlying determinism in question.

The same argument can be applied to the assumption of probabilistic causation! The fact of the matter is that both "probabilistic causation" and "deterministic causation" are premises which must be assumed either true or false - it is not possible to prove either one true or false.

Agentive causation appeals to the irreducible individuality of agents.

And therein lies the infinite regress of ultimate responsibility - see for example :

http://www.geocities.com/alex_b_christie/Swamp.pdf

Agentive causation is internal -- agents are self-determining.

again "self-determination" leads to infinite regress - see above reference.

Best Regards

 

[Tournesol]

Originally Posted by Tournesol

In the present day we have good reason to think of causation as probablistic, as influenceing without determining completely, as in phrases like 'smoking causes cancer', which means 'smoking makes cancer more likely', not '100% of everybody who smokes will get cancer'.

It does not follow from this macroscopic observation that causation itself is probabilistic. I would argue that we have no more reason to think causation is probabilistic than to think it strictly deterministic.

It is intended to rebut the argument that causaion is detemimnistic by definition. Refuting an argument against X is of course not quite the same
thing as proving X.

The overal point is that there are many ways of thinking about
casuality, so questions like "do quantum events have causes" need
to be made more precise before they can be answered.

If causality really is probablistic, then it is quite prossible to derive causal laws empirically by noting that repeated correlations of events, that events of type B tend to follow on events of type A, what are called 'empirical laws' in science.

That's a big "if".

That is not the point. Again, this addressed against an arguemtn
against probalsitic causality. The argument has it that only
scientific methodology can only work with determinism.
However scientific methodology works without even knowing
whether underlying determinism or indeterminism is the case.

The same argument can be applied to the assumption of probabilistic causation! The fact of the matter is that both "probabilistic causation" and "deterministic causation" are premises which must be assumed either true or false - it is not possible to prove either one true or false.

Can you definitively state that another genius like the late J.S Bell
will not come along with a method to test them ?

I submit that the ultimate extent to which they can be demonstrated is itself unknown.

 

[Tournesol]

Agentive causation appeals to the irreducible individuality of agents.

And therein lies the infinite regress of ultimate responsibility -

This definition...

"Ultimate Responsibility is the premise that an agent is able to act
autonomously of all external circumstances (past and future) and
yet still be in control of its actions."

...may well involve a regress, but it is not the definition I am using,
which is this..."(UR), the idea that there is a genuine sense in which you are the originator of your voluntary acts, and therefore bear responsibility for them. "

Note also the defintion of FW I am using

"the power or ability to rationally choose and consciously perform actions, at least some of which are not brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances".

"at least some of which"...that's all.

 

[moving finger]

Hi Tournesol

It is intended to rebut the argument that causaion is detemimnistic by definition. Refuting an argument against X is of course not quite the same thing as proving X.

As I have tried to explain, what we observe at the macroscopic level is often correlation rather than causation. To say that “smoking causes cancer” is thus an incorrect use of the verb “to cause”, to argue that this incorrect use of the verb provides evidence which allows us to refute the premise that causation is deterministic is (imho) false and misleading. All it actually means is that the common English expression “smoking causes cancer” is misleading because it is an inappropriate use of the verb “to cause”. It would be just as incorrect to say that “smoking is responsible for cancer” (but many people do).

The overal point is that there are many ways of thinking about casuality, so questions like "do quantum events have causes" need to be made more precise before they can be answered.

I agree completely. Which is why I disagree with your suggestion that “we have good reason to think of causation as probabilistic”. We don’t. We actually have good reason to think that we often use the verb “to cause” in inappropriate and imprecise ways in common speech, such as “smoking causes cancer”.

That is not the point. Again, this addressed against an arguemtn against probalsitic causality. The argument has it that only scientific methodology can only work with determinism. However scientific methodology works without even knowing whether underlying determinism or indeterminism is the case.

Which “argument has it that” scientific methodology can only work with determinism? I have never seen such an argument, and I would certainly disagree with it if I did see it.

The point I am making is that we have no way of knowing for certain (at a fundamental level) whether “causation” is either strictly deterministic or probabilistic. But postulating that it is probabilistic does not actually add anything in terms of explanatory power – everything we observe and know about the universe can be explained assuming strict determinism – the hypothesis of probabilistic causation is simply not needed to explain anything at all (except in the minds of libertarians who need the premise of “alternate possibilities”). “Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse“ as Pierre-Simon Laplace once said to Napoleon.

Can you definitively state that another genius like the late J.S Bell will not come along with a method to test them ?

Just as definitively as you can say that the premise of probabilistic causation cannot be refuted.

I submit that the ultimate extent to which they can be demonstrated is itself unknown.

If you truly believe this, how can you say definitively that the premise of probabilistic causation cannot be refuted?

"(UR), the idea that there is a genuine sense in which you are the originator of your voluntary acts, and therefore bear responsibility for them. "

The problem is that this simply begs the question of how one is to define “originator”. Surely a genuine “originator” must be able to act autonomously of all external circumstances (past and future) - if not, if the “originator” is in turn determined by other states external to itself, then how can it be genuinely an “originator”?

How am I to tell whether an agent possesses this “genuine sense” of UR or not? What are the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for this “genuine sense” of UR? To simply define it as a “genuine sense” begs the question as to how we are to determine whether this sense of UR is “genuine” or not?

To be ultimately responsible for what you do, you must also be ultimately responsible for the way you are (because the way you are, in absence of mere caprice, determines what you do). But to be ultimately responsible for the way you are, you would have to have intentionally brought it about that you are the way you are. Intentionality is a fundamental aspect of UR (if what we do is not what we intend to do, how can we be held ultimately responsible for what we do?). But to intentionally bring about a certain state N, you must have had a prior state N-1 which led to the intentional development of your state N (if N is an arbitrary state in the sense that you had no state prior to N which intentionally brought about state N, then you can hardly be responsible for state N, can you?). But this also means that state N-1 must have been brought about intentionally in a similar fashion, which means there must have been some prior intentional state N-2…… and so on ad infinitum. UR thus entails an infinite regress of intentional states. The only escape from such regress is to postulate either some arbitrary intentional starting state, or that the self is somehow magically and mystically able to pull itself up by its own bootstraps, the original causa sui (cause of itself).

Note also the defintion of FW I am using

"the power or ability to rationally choose and consciously perform actions, at least some of which are not brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances".

Your definition does not mention UR. Do you believe one can have free will without UR?

Best Regards

 

[Tournesol]

As I have tried to explain, what we observe at the macroscopic level is often correlation rather than causation. To say that “smoking causes cancer” is thus an incorrect use of the verb “to cause”, to argue that this incorrect use of the verb provides evidence which allows us to refute the premise that causation is deterministic is (imho) false and misleading. All it actually means is that the common English expression “smoking causes cancer” is misleading because it is an inappropriate use of the verb “to cause”. It would be just as incorrect to say that “smoking is responsible for cancer” (but many people do).

This is all rather beside the point. Less-than-strictly-deterministic causation is clearly conceivebale, even if you insist that it is not the proper use of the word "cause". (Which, BTW looks like a "true scotsman"
argument to me).

If there is a problem with probablistic causation , it is not that
it is conceptually incoherent.

I agree completely. Which is why I disagree with your suggestion that “we have good reason to think of causation as probabilistic”. We don’t. We actually have good reason to think that we often use the verb “to cause” in inappropriate and imprecise ways in common speech, such as “smoking causes cancer”.

That doesn't follow. Just becuase there is a plurality of ways
of thinking about causation, it doens't mean that some
are 100% correct and others are 100% false, and even
if they are, you have given no reason to think they would
divide according to your preconceptions. Oh, and you *still*
can't determine what is real or not just by the "correct" use
of words. Even if the word "cause" only refers to classical-style
determinism, quantum physicists are prefectly entitled
to claim there is empirical evidence of another connecting principle
between events -- which they would
repsumably have to call somethign else, a quause, perhaps.

The point I am making is that we have no way of knowing for certain (at a fundamental level) whether “causation” is either strictly deterministic or probabilistic. But postulating that it is probabilistic does not actually add anything in terms of explanatory power – everything we observe and know about the universe can be explained assuming strict determinism – the hypothesis of probabilistic causation is simply not needed to explain anything at all (except in the minds of libertarians who need the premise of “alternate possibilities”). “Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse“ as Pierre-Simon Laplace once said to Napoleon.

That is wrong on a number of counts. The Aspect experiment shows tha
tte universe can only be determinstic if it it is also non-local. Relativity
indicates that it is local. Indeterminism is also
useful in explaining spontaneous symmetery-breaking.the large-scale
structure of the universe and so on.

I submit that the ultimate extent to which they can be demonstrated is itself unknown.

If you truly believe this, how can you say definitively that the premise of probabilistic causation cannot be refuted?

Where did I say that ? Perhaps you think probablistic causation
should not be entertained as a possibility unless it is shown
to be irrefutably true, whereas determinism should be maintained
even in the face of countervailing evidence; but that is
just your prejudice again.

"(UR), the idea that there is a genuine sense in which you are the originator of your voluntary acts, and therefore bear responsibility for them. "The problem is that this simply begs the question of how one is to define “originator”.

Well, I define it in terms of "uncaused cause". And I avoid the regress problem by seperating the uncaused causes, in the RIG,
from ther Rational Self Control in the SIS.

Surely a genuine “originator” must be able to act autonomously of all external circumstances (past and future) -

No. Look at the defintion of FW again.

"the power or ability to rationally choose and consciously perform actions, at least some of which are not brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances".

if not, if the “originator” is in turn determined by other states external to itself, then how can it be genuinely an “originator”?

The originator is partly determined and partly undetermined.

The opposite of "all" is "some or none", not "none".

How am I to tell whether an agent possesses this “genuine sense” of UR or not?

By studying the physics of indeterminism and the human brian, I suppose.

What are the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for this “genuine sense” of UR?

As distnguished from a merely conventional sense, e.g. that certain
pieces of paper are money.

To simply define it as a “genuine sense” begs the question as to how we are to determine whether this sense of UR is “genuine” or not?

No it doesn't. I have expalined this issue
in http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_darwin.html

To be ultimately responsible for what you do, you must also be ultimately responsible for the way you are (because the way you are, in absence of mere caprice, determines what you do).

Bearing in mind that that only means something other than
external forces is *partly* responsible for what you are.
Your "infinite regress" comes about from your -- not my --
requirement that internal fators at time T-1 are *entirely*
responsible for my state at time T. If they are only
partly responsible then the causal chain can "fade put" or
"taper off". (cf Dennett's "first mammal")."the power or ability to rationally choose and consciously perform actions, at least some of which are not brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances".

An action that is not brough about externally, is brough about
internally.

 

[moving finger]

Hi Tournesol

This is all rather beside the point. Less-than-strictly-deterministic causation is clearly conceivebale, even if you insist that it is not the proper use of the word "cause".

The above comment is a straw man. Pink fairies at the bottom of my garden are also “conceivable”, but mere “conceivability” is not the issue here. You stated in post #5 :

we have good reason to think of causation as probablistic

and I disagree with that statement. This IS the point. We do not have good reason to think of causation as probabilistic – we have good reason to think that the verb “to cause” in common usage is often misapplied, that many people talk of causation when they should be talking of correlation.

If there is a problem with probablistic causation , it is not that it is conceptually incoherent.

I have not said that “probabilistic causation” is conceptually incoherent – this is a straw man (and YOU talk about true scotsman arguments)! My argument has been that probabilistic causation is explanatorily inefficacious and unnecessary – everything can be explained on the premise of strict determinism.

Just becuase there is a plurality of ways of thinking about causation, it doens't mean that some are 100% correct and others are 100% false, and even if they are, you have given no reason to think they would divide according to your preconceptions.

I could say exactly the same about your preconceptions. You choose to define “causation” as probabilistic and to hang on to the notion that smoking causes lung cancer; I instead choose to define “causation” as deterministic and prefer the notion that smoking is correlated with lung cancer. It’s a matter of opinion as to which one is the “better” explanation of the relationship between smoking and lung cancer.

Oh, and you *still* can't determine what is real or not just by the "correct" use of words.

I am not saying that probabilistic causation cannot exist – I am saying that we do not need to posit its existence in order to explain anything about the world, and lack of clarity in the meaning and use of words in common language leads to the kinds of misconceptions that you have been discussing – such as the strange conclusion “we have good reason to think of causation as probablistic”.

Even if the word "cause" only refers to classical-style determinism, quantum physicists are prefectly entitled to claim there is empirical evidence of another connecting principle between events -- which they would repsumably have to call somethign else, a quause, perhaps.

I’m not sure that many quantum physicists DO talk about causation (or quausation) when talking about the quantum world. John Bell famously used the words “speakable” and “unspeakable” in reference to the differences in epistemology between classical and quantum mechanics. Bell was a determinist – he supported and promoted David Bohm’s views on hidden variables – and I am sure he would have said that it doesn’t matter what name you “call” it, as long as you are consistent and rigorous in your application of that name. To suggest that the verb “to cause” means the same thing when we say “smoking causes lung cancer” as it does when we say “the photon caused the atom to go into an excited state” is not necessarily correct and can lead to misunderstanding.

The strict interpretation of quantum phenomena is that we see regularities and correlations between quantum states. I doubt that many physicists use naïve language such as “state X causes state Y”. Instead they refer to the probability of consequent state Y given antecedent state X, but in so doing they are not necessarily claiming that this probabilistic relationship is ontic. All we know, all we can know, is limited by our epistemic horizon – we (epistemically) see probabilistic relationships but we cannot safely infer from this that the relationship is (ontically) not strictly deterministic. The correct interpretation is that we just do not know.

The Aspect experiment shows thatte universe can only be determinstic if it it is also non-local. Relativity indicates that it is local.

In what way does the theory of relativity indicate that the world is strictly “local”? If you are referring simply to the restriction on speed of information transfer in relativity then this is NOT in contradiction with quantum non-locality as understood in entanglement experiments (what Einstein called “spooky action at a distance” and led to the Aspect experiment via the EPR “paradox” based on naïve relativistic interpretations in the first place).

Indeterminism is also useful in explaining spontaneous symmetery-breaking.the large-scale structure of the universe and so on.

There is nothing in this that cannot be explained by indeterminable as opposed to indeterministic effects. Its often a useful approximation to assume strict indeterminism (when I play a game of cards I usually assume the hand I am dealt is genuinely random – but its actually quite determined. The point is that neither I nor anyone else in the game can determine what my hand will be in advance, hence my assumption of randomness is a good approximation).

Perhaps you think probablistic causation should not be entertained as a possibility unless it is shown to be irrefutably true, whereas determinism should be maintained even in the face of countervailing evidence; but that is just your prejudice again.

I have never said.that determinism should be maintained in the face of countervailing evidence, thus to accuse me of prejudice in this particular respect is just a little disingenuous. The “evidence” points to limits in our ability to know, it points to the world being epistemically indeterminable, but it is simply a leap of faith to jump from this to the conclusion that the world is therefore ontically indeterministic. If anything, I am a free will skeptic and not necessarily a hard determinist. See here for a detailed explanation of the difference :

http://www.geocities.com/alex_b_christie/Routes.pdf

If you read my above post #11 you will see the following :

The point I am making is that we have no way of knowing for certain (at a fundamental level) whether “causation” is either strictly deterministic or probabilistic. But postulating that it is probabilistic does not actually add anything in terms of explanatory power – everything we observe and know about the universe can be explained assuming strict determinism – the hypothesis of probabilistic causation is simply not needed to explain anything at all (except in the minds of libertarians who need the premise of “alternate possibilities”). “Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse“ as Pierre-Simon Laplace once said to Napoleon.

To my mind, “prejudice” is exemplified by an irrational belief in the premise of probabilistic causation when there is no need for such a premise.

Well, I define it in terms of "uncaused cause". And I avoid the regress problem by seperating the uncaused causes, in the RIG, from ther Rational Self Control in the SIS.

A genuinely random (indeterministic) event is an “uncaused cause” – but I am sure you are not saying that UR is grounded in random events – or perhaps you are?

The only way to avoid the problem of infinite regress is either by appeal to supernatiural forces, or by postulating an arbitrary “starting state”. In your RIG/SIS this arbitrary statrting state is the indeterministic nature of the RIG. Are you seriously suggesting that one can be ultimately responsible for a chain of events which originates in indeterminism? I have shown how your model of RIG/SIS does not give rise to anything which could be called UR at :

http://www.geocities.com/alex_b_christie/Swamp.pdf

Surely a genuine “originator” must be able to act autonomously of all external circumstances (past and future) -

No. Look at the defintion of FW again.

Who is using “true scotsman” now? The word “originator” appears in your definition of UR, not in your definition of FW. In fact your definition of FW does not even refer to responsibility, much less ultimate responsibility. Thus I ask again, in reference to your definition of UR, surely a genuine “originator” must be able to act autonomously of all external circumstances (past and future) - if not, if the “originator” is in turn determined by other states external to itself, then how can it be genuinely an “originator”?

The originator is partly determined and partly undetermined.

This is the “smoke and mirrors” juggling tactic of the naturalist libertarian magician – to claim that UR is somehow a mysterious combination of determinism and indeterminism (hopping on the determinism foot when his explanation is accused of leading to caprice, and then hopping on the indeterminism foot when his explanation is accused of being deterministic – and hoping that by hopping fast enough from one foot to the other he can somehow “create” an illusion of ultimate responsibility where it doesn't actually exist), without showing exactly how these two can actually combine to produce genuine UR. Your “Darwinian model” certainly doesn’t do it.

How am I to tell whether an agent possesses this “genuine sense” of UR or not?

By studying the physics of indeterminism and the human brian, I suppose.

How could we tell whether your Darwinian model gives rise to UR? Or perhaps you are not claiming that it does give rise to UR?

What are the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for this “genuine sense” of UR?

As distnguished from a merely conventional sense, e.g. that certain pieces of paper are money.

Is this supposed to be an answer to the question?

To simply define it as a “genuine sense” begs the question as to how we are to determine whether this sense of UR is “genuine” or not?

No it doesn't. I have expalined this issue
in http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_darwin.html

I cannot see an explanation of UR in there. Could you be more explicit? Your website focuses on the need for CHDO and APs as alleged necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for free will, it does not go into much detail on the explanation of how we are to distinguish genuine from non-genuine UR.

All you seem to explain on the issue of UR is the following :

if you trace a cause-effect chain backwards it will come to a halt at an indetermistic cause; the indeterministic cause stands at the "head" of a cause-effect chain. Thus, such causes can pin down the UR, the originative power, of agents.

But this simply gets back to my question above –

Are you seriously suggesting that one can be ultimately responsible for a chain of events which originates in indeterminism?

Bearing in mind that that only means something other than external forces is *partly* responsible for what you are. Your "infinite regress" comes about from your -- not my -- requirement that internal fators at time T-1 are *entirely* responsible for my state at time T. If they are only partly responsible then the causal chain can "fade put" or "taper off". (cf Dennett's "first mammal").

Again the smoke and mirrors wriggling and hopping of the naturalist libertarian. Where exactly does the UR actually arise? You are saying not in indeterminism, and not in determinism, but in some mysterious conmbination of the two. But there is no such combination which gives rise to UR. Your “fading out” explanation is simply an ackowledgement that UR is grounded in some arbitrary starting state – that we cannot in fact be ultimately responsible for what we are because “what we are” ultimately “fades out” in arbitrariness. I have no problem with this explanation – but this is not “ultimate responsibility” in the sense that most libertarians would wish for.

From your website :

“we cannot trace back a chain of purposes-for-purposes ad infinitum” …… “this process of looking for ultimate rational explanations is unusual to say the least. Our normal attitude is that John and Mary have their reasons, which are very much part of who they are, and that’s that”…. “Either the exaplanatory chain ….. terminates, unaccountably, in themselves, or it continues outside…..”

The above libertarian “explication” of UR reads more like a determinist’s argument for the incoherency of the notion of UR. To say that Mary’s reasons are simply part of who she is, and that’s that, is exactly what the determinist says. To say that Mary’s reasons are simply part of who she is, is to say that these reasons of Mary’s are not created by any other of Mary’s reasons, and it begs the question of “how did Mary get to be who she is in the first place, and how can it come about that she can be held responsible for who she is?”. The determinists and free will skeptics would agree with the libertarian that Mary’s reasons must be grounded in some X which has no antecedent causal states which may be further attributed to Mary as a responsible individual. Where the libertarian differs is that she assumes there are no antecedent states prior to this X, and that X somehow brings itself into existence not arbitrarily but (somehow) under Mary’s control and therefore responsibility; whereas the determinists and free will skeptics claim that X is itself the consequence of antecedent causal states “outside of or prior to Mary” (or, in the case of free will skeptics, X may simply be arbitrary), and thus Mary cannot possesses UR for X.

To the non-libertarian, the concept that an agent’s reasons may be ultimately grounded in something which is neither determined nor arbitrary is simply inconsistent or incoherent. If determinism and indeterminism are all we have to choose from, then these fundamental reasons X that Mary possesses, the reasons which cannot be traced back to any other of Mary’s reasons, must themselves either have a source which is either determined or arbitrary (this is the approach taken by all camps except for the supernaturalist libertarians), or if neither determined nor arbitrary then the source of Mary’s X must be supernatural (ie beyond rational or logical explanation – this is the approach taken by supernaturalist libertarians).

An action that is not brough about externally, is brough about internally.

Quite. But my question was in fact :

Your definition does not mention UR. Do you believe one can have free will without UR?

Best Regards

 

[moving finger]

By that, do you mean that every event is created by a preceding cause as in "cause and effect"?

What is the most commonly accepted understanding of radioactive decay? Is radioactive decay:
1. Caused by some prior indeterministic event.
2. Caused by some prior deterministic, yet unknowable event.
3. Not caused by any event, and only the probability of the event occurring is knowable.

Commonly accepted understanding is a guide to common acceptance of understanding, and not necessarily a good guide to truth.

imho the correct (ie true) understanding is a combination of (2) and (3) (they both say that the "cause" is unknowable). imho we cannot in principle know what "causes" the decay, therefore any further attempt at explanation in terms of hidden variables or genuine probabilistic dynamics is mere speculation.

Best Regards

 

[Tournesol]

By that, do you mean that every event is created by a preceding cause as in "cause and effect"?

What is the most commonly accepted understanding of radioactive decay? Is radioactive decay:
1. Caused by some prior indeterministic event.
2. Caused by some prior deterministic, yet unknowable event.
3. Not caused by any event, and only the probability of the event occurring is knowable.

It depends what you mean by "cause". You don't get a radioactive decay event without having a radioisotope in the first place, so such
events certainly have necessary causes.

 

[moving finger]

It depends what you mean by "cause". You don't get a radioactive decay event without having a radioisotope in the first place, so such events certainly have necessary causes.

here we have a "chicken and egg" situation.

Is it the fact that the atom is a radioactive isotope which "causes" it to decay (what it seems is what you are suggesting), or is it the fact that the atom decays which then "makes it" a radioactive isotope?

The former assumes a "prescriptive" view of the laws of nature (atoms are necessarily caused to decay because they are radioactive isotopes), and the latter assumes a "descriptive" view of the laws of nature (whatever it is that causes an atom to decay, the fact that it decays then makes it a radioactive isotope by definition).

Best Regards

 

[selfAdjoint]

here we have a "chicken and egg" situation.

Is it the fact that the atom is a radioactive isotope which "causes" it to decay (what it seems is what you are suggesting), or is it the fact that the atom decays which then "makes it" a radioactive isotope?

Isn't this kind of situation what Aristotle invented his classification of causes for? The fact that the atom is of a radioactive substance is a formal cause. The material cause is that an up quark somewhere in one of the nuclei emits an antineutrino and a W particle and turns into a down quark. What is asked for is an effective cause, of the form "A thingy-bob is struck by a stray antineutrino and fissions into two what-ya-callums, one of which strikes an up quark causing it to emit a W particle and a balancing antineutrino and turn into a down quark." Then the randomness would be reduced to the unpredictability of stray antineutrinos.

 

[Tournesol]

here we have a "chicken and egg" situation.

Is it the fact that the atom is a radioactive isotope which "causes" it to decay (what it seems is what you are suggesting), or is it the fact that the atom decays which then "makes it" a radioactive isotope?

What makes an atom unstable is the ratio of protons to
neutrons in the nucleus.

 

[Q_Goest]

selfA said: Isn't this kind of situation what Aristotle invented his classification of causes for? The fact that the atom is of a radioactive substance is a formal cause. The material cause is that an up quark somewhere in one of the nuclei emits an antineutrino and a W particle and turns into a down quark. What is asked for is an effective cause, of the form "A thingy-bob is struck by a stray antineutrino and fissions into two what-ya-callums, one of which strikes an up quark causing it to emit a W particle and a balancing antineutrino and turn into a down quark." Then the randomness would be reduced to the unpredictability of stray antineutrinos.

I think this is the best responce to what causes radioactive decay. I'm assuming selfA is not actually suggesting the antineutrino being an actual cause but an example of a potential "effective cause" as he's putting it. One can break the concept down into there being some "formal cause" which is that the atom is a radioactive substance. This is not unlike saying "smoking causes cancer" in that smoking isn't the "effective cause" but what Tournsel describes as a "trigger".

Regardless of what words you want to define the "effective cause" - for the case of radioactive decay, we don't know if there is such a cause or not. It may be there is a effective cause, and selfA has given an example of what it might be, or it may be there is no effective cause. SelfA, please correct me if I'm miss-quoting you.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Q_Goest you have my meaning exactly. My use of "thingy-bob" and "what-ya-callums" was to indicate that I wasn't proposing a serious explanation, just suggesting the kind of explanation, if one were ever to be discovered, that would fulfill the idea of an effective cause.

 

[moving finger]

What makes an atom unstable is the ratio of protons to neutrons in the nucleus.

quite - but this tells us nothing about the "cause" of instability (actually its not simply the ratio of protons to neutrons : Hydrogen has a ratio of 1:0 and is stable, whereas any other element with the same ratio is unstable)

Best Regards

 

[Tournesol]

and I disagree with that statement. This IS the point. We do not have good reason to think of causation as probabilistic – we have good reason to think that the verb “to cause” in common usage is often misapplied, that many people talk of causation when they should be talking of correlation.

I have stated why we have reason to think causation is probablistic. You haven't stated why the word "cause" is being
misapplied, only that it is.

If there is a problem with probablistic causation , it is not that it is conceptually incoherent.
I have not said that “probabilistic causation” is conceptually incoherent – this is a straw man (and YOU talk about true scotsman arguments)! My argument has been that probabilistic causation is explanatorily inefficacious and unnecessary – everything can be explained on the premise of strict determinism.

Well, it can't. The large-scale structure of the cosmos was not caused by our inability to predict something.

I could say exactly the same about your preconceptions. You choose to define “causation” as probabilistic and to hang on to the notion that smoking causes lung cancer;

I instead choose to define “causation” as deterministic and prefer the notion that smoking is correlated with lung cancer. It’s a matter of opinion as to which one is the “better” explanation of the relationship between smoking and lung cancer.

I don't define causation as probablistic; I note that among the may senses of the word, there
is a probablistic one. My position is not a mirror image of yours. I am reflecting usage,
not dictating it.

Oh, and you *still* can't determine what is real or not just by the "correct" use of words.
I am not saying that probabilistic causation cannot exist – I am saying that we do not need to posit its existence in order to explain anything about the world, and lack of clarity in the meaning and use of words in common language leads to the kinds of misconceptions that you have been discussing – such as the strange conclusion “we have good reason to think of causation as probablistic”.

The idea that that is a misconception is entirely based on your dictat that
the word "cause" has only a strictly determinsitic meaning, which is
contradicted by common usage, and which you have not justified in any way.

Even if the word "cause" only refers to classical-style determinism, quantum physicists are prefectly entitled to claim there is
empirical evidence of another connecting principle between events -- which they would repsumably have to call somethign else,
a quause, perhaps.

I’m not sure that many quantum physicists DO talk about causation (or quausation) when talking about the quantum world.

Some do, some don't. But there is a need for *some* concept stronger than mere statistical correlation (which could be complete
coincidence, after all) yet weaker than strict determinism. Since determinsim and correlation have
well-defined meanings, and since cause has de facto mutiple meanings, it seems sensible
to use cause to fill in the middle ground.

John Bell famously used the words “speakable” and “unspeakable” in reference to the differences in epistemology between
classical and quantum mechanics. Bell was a determinist – he supported and promoted David Bohm’s views on hidden variables

I know. But scientific truth is defined by the results of experiments, not the pesonal opinons of scientists.

– and I am sure he would have said that it doesn’t matter what name you “call” it, as long as you are consistent and rigorous
in your application of that name. To suggest that the verb “to cause” means the same thing when we say “smoking causes lung cancer”
as it does when we say “the photon caused the atom to go into an excited state” is not necessarily correct and can lead to
misunderstanding.

Indeed. Hence my campaign to speak in terms of neccseary cause, sufficient cause, trigger cause, background
cause, etc.

The strict interpretation of quantum phenomena is that we see regularities and correlations between quantum states.

it is no interpretation to say that we see correlations: that is just a statement
of prima-facie facts. The point of an interpretation is to explain the PF
facts -- to say what causes them , in some sense of "cause".

I doubt that many physicists use naïve language such as “state X causes state Y”. Instead they refer to the probability of consequent
state Y given antecedent state X, but in so doing they are not necessarily claiming that this probabilistic relationship is ontic.

They do indeed often refrain from making "ontic" comments. However, in doing so
they refrain from interpretation. It is somtimes said that the most
common interpretation of QM is "shut up and calculate". That is
a joke because SUAC is not in fact an interpretation.

All we know, all we can know, is limited by our epistemic horizon – we (epistemically) see probabilistic relationships but we
cannot safely infer from this that the relationship is (ontically) not strictly deterministic.

If we are not going to interpret, we might as well not bother doing science -- it would just be "stamp collecting".

Of course, no-one has a problem with interpretation when it looks like
we are going to havc a nice determinsistic, classical interpretation.

People tend to become sudden converts to irrealism/instrumentalism when
faced with the horrible prospect of abandoning determinsim, IME.

Of course they would have to abandon everything else, to be consistent, if they
want to be consistent...

The correct interpretation is that we just do not know.

If you are going to equate knowledge with certainty, then we
don't know anything else either. Science is nothing
but best guesses from top to bottom.

If you are referring simply to the restriction on speed of information transfer in relativity then this is
NOT in contradiction with quantum non-locality as understood in entanglement experiments (what Einstein called “spooky action at a
distance” and led to the Aspect experiment via the EPR “paradox” based on naïve relativistic interpretations in the first place).

The Aspect experiment rules out local hidden variables. The only remaining
recourse for the determinist is therefore a non-local HV theory, but no-one has
been able to construct a relativisable one.



"Einstein died a decade before Bell's work was published, but I can't resist speculating about how he would have chosen between the
two principles which defined his life in science: realism and locality. It is difficult to imagine that with his commitment to
understanding nature, and his deep reverence for its mystery, Einstein could have been satisfied with the concept of physics as a mere
machine for predicting the results of experiments, with an explicit denial that there was any deeper reality than our everyday world,
and with a rejection of the possibility that the success of physical theories could be explained in any coherent way. There seems
little point in retaining locality while at the same time denying that the particles and fields which act "locally" have any existence
except as elements in a calculation. But how could one have a realistic, non-local theory that is also consistent with all the results
of relativity? David Bohm's theory gives no answer, as it is constructed only in the non-relativistic approximation. The fundamental
problem is causality: if two events with a space-like separation are non-locally linked, as in EPR experiments, which comes first? What
one needs is a privileged frame, whether defined by the presence of God (as Newton thought) or of the ether (as the Maxwellians
thought) or in a more abstract way. The crucial subtlety is that no experiment in either classical or quantum physics can show which
frame is the fundamental one: both theories are Lorentz-invarient in this sense."

http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~jpl/cosmo/blunder.html

Indeterminism is also useful in explaining spontaneous symmetery-breaking.the large-scale structure of the universe and so on.

There is nothing in this that cannot be explained by indeterminable as opposed to indeterministic effects. Its often a useful
approximation to assume strict indeterminism (when I play a game of cards I usually assume the hand I am dealt is genuinely random –
but its actually quite determined. The point is that neither I nor anyone else in the game can determine what my hand will be in
advance, hence my assumption of randomness is a good approximation).

The large scale structure of the universe is not caused by your ignorance.

I have never said.that determinism should be maintained in the face of countervailing evidence, thus to accuse me of prejudice in this particular respect is just a little disingenuous. The “evidence” points to limits in our ability to know,

"Limitations on knowledge" is hidden variables. The evidence goes beyond that
one class of hidden variable theory has been ruled out.

it points to the world being epistemically indeterminable, but it is simply a leap of faith to jump from this to the conclusion that the world is therefore ontically indeterministic.

It is no more a leap of faith than insisting that unrpedictable things
are nonetheless deterministic in ways we cannot fathom. In fact, the probablistic
alernative is preferreable by Occam's razor.

The point I am making is that we have no way of knowing for certain (at a fundamental level) whether “causation” is either strictly deterministic or probabilistic. But postulating that it is probabilistic does not actually add anything in terms of explanatory power – everything we observe and know about the universe can be explained assuming strict determinism – the hypothesis of probabilistic causation is simply not needed to explain anything at all (except in the minds of libertarians who need the premise of “alternate possibilities”). “Je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothèse“ as Pierre-Simon Laplace once said to Napoleon.


To my mind, “prejudice” is exemplified by an irrational belief in the premise of probabilistic causation when there is no need for such a premise.

I have given several examples of where there is a need. Your "no need of such a hypothesis" is back
to front. Determinists are asserting the existence of something -- unknown causes, hidden variables --
indeterminists are not. It is the determinists who are claiming the existence of additional,
unnecessary entitities, and who must therefore answer to the Razor.

 

[Tournesol]

A genuinely random (indeterministic) event is an “uncaused cause” – but I am sure you are not saying that UR is grounded in random events – or perhaps you are?

It is not grounded in any single, basic, atomic factor that does all the work, all at one.
It is grounded in both determinism and indeteminsim interacting
over time in a complex and specfic way.

Darwinism likewise only looks like "mere caprice" if you ignore natural selection.

The only way to avoid the problem of infinite regress is either by appeal to supernatiural forces, or by postulating an arbitrary “starting state”.
In your RIG/SIS this arbitrary statrting state is the indeterministic nature of the RIG. Are you seriously suggesting that one can be ultimately responsible for a chain of events which originates in indeterminism?

Yes, because the SIS filters out the activity of the RIG, just a selection filters mutation.

I have shown how your model of RIG/SIS does not give rise to anything which could be called UR at :

http://www.geocities.com/alex_b_christie/Swamp.pdf

You are not using my defintion of UR.

If you have your own definition, fine: just don't accuse
me of internal inconsistency when the problem is actually
extrinsic.

Surely a genuine “originator” must be able to act autonomously of all external circumstances (past and future) -

No. Look at the defintion of FW again.

Who is using “true scotsman” now? The word “originator” appears in your definition of UR, not in your definition of FW.

Not in a way that implies the ability "to act autonomously of all external circumstances (past and future)".

In fact your definition of FW does not even refer to responsibility, much less ultimate responsibility. Thus I ask again, in reference to your definition of UR, surely a genuine “originator” must be able to act autonomously of all external circumstances (past and future)

No.

You need to present an argumet for this claim not just state it.

The point about Origination is that we hold some entities repsonsible and not others. For compatiblists,
that is a mere convention, for libertarians it must have an objective basis. The basis
is the ability to intentionally originate actions. We do not blame the gun for the murder because guns
do not spontaneously kill people. We praise the artist, not her brushes.
The murderer does have the ability to intentionally
originate actions. That has nothing to do with "complete indendependence" from all
circumstances"; it is only the ability to produce a causal output that
is greater than the causal input. If you only do one original thing in
your entire life, that objectively disingusishes you from a gun or a paintbrush.
Guns and brushes have 0% ability to originate actiosn. You don't have to be 100%
original 100% of the time to be objectively distinguished from them.

- if not, if the “originator” is in turn determined by other states external to itself, then how can it be genuinely an “originator”?

False dichotomy. The originator can be somewere between 100% determined and 0% determined.

The originator is partly determined and partly undetermined.

This is the “smoke and mirrors” juggling tactic of the naturalist libertarian magician – to claim that UR is somehow a mysterious combination of determinism and indeterminism (hopping on the determinism foot when his explanation is accused of leading to caprice, and then hopping on the indeterminism foot when his explanation is accused of being deterministic – and hoping that by hopping fast enough from one foot to the other he can somehow “create” an illusion of ultimate responsibility where it doesn't actually exist), without showing exactly how these two can actually combine to produce genuine UR. Your “Darwinian model” certainly doesn’t do it.

That is rhetoric. There is no real argument there.

How could we tell whether your Darwinian model gives rise to UR?

By showing that it fulfils the criteria for
UR that I have stated, i.e it gives rise to both an originative power
and rational self contol.

What are the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for this “genuine sense” of UR?

As distnguished from a merely conventional sense, e.g. that certain pieces of paper are money.

Is this supposed to be an answer to the question?

I have stated the conditions numerous times.

UR means having both an originative power
and rational self contol, and it is genuine
if it is based on more than mere social
convention.

if you trace a cause-effect chain backwards it will come to a halt at an indetermistic cause; the indeterministic cause stands at the "head" of a cause-effect chain. Thus, such causes can pin down the UR, the originative power, of agents.

But this simply gets back to my question above –

Are you seriously suggesting that one can be ultimately responsible for a chain of events which originates in indeterminism?

Yes, if you also have rational self control."Firstly, I am not saying that indeterministic causes correspond one-to-one to human decisions or actions. It takes billions of basic physical events to produce an action or decision. The claim that indeterminism is part of this complex process does not mean that individual decisions are "just random". (As I expand here).

Secondly, I am also not saying that indeterminism by itself is a fully sufficient criterion for agenthood. If phsyical indeterminism is widespread (as argued here), that would attribute free will to all sorts of unlikely agents, such as decaying atoms. Our theory requires some additional criteria. There is no reason why these should not be largely the same criteria used by compatibilists and supercompatibilists -- rule-following rationallity, lack of external compulsion, etc. Where their criteria do not go far enough, we can supplement them with UR and AP. Where their criteria attribute free will too widely to entities, our supplementary criteria will narrow the domain".

Bearing in mind that that only means something other than external forces is *partly* responsible for what you are. Your "infinite regress" comes about from your -- not my -- requirement that internal fators at time T-1 are *entirely* responsible for my state at time T. If they are only partly responsible then the causal chain can "fade put" or "taper off". (cf Dennett's "first mammal").

Again the smoke and mirrors wriggling and hopping of the naturalist libertarian. Where exactly does the UR actually arise?

Where exactly does speciation arise ? It is a complex process, not something that happens atomically at a
single point. Is Darwinism (per se) smoke and mirrors for failing to say
exactly when and where speciation occurs ?

You are saying not in indeterminism, and not in determinism, but in some mysterious conmbination of the two.

It is not mysterious, it is based on the interaction of the SIS and RIG.

You are still in the grip of the Basicness Assumption.

But there is no such combination which gives rise to UR.

If you are saying that the interaction of SIS and RIG does not explain UR, you have to
say why.

Your “fading out” explanation is simply an ackowledgement that UR is grounded in some arbitrary starting state – that we cannot in fact be ultimately responsible for what we are because “what we are” ultimately “fades out” in arbitrariness.

The SIS gives us rational self-control over our actions and decision, including
those that have repercussions for our character.

I have no problem with this explanation – but this is not “ultimate responsibility” in the sense that most libertarians would wish for.

Whatever. Most libertarians are supernaturalists.
I am explaining FW and UR as I have defined them.

The above libertarian “explication” of UR reads more like a determinist’s argument for the incoherency of the notion of UR. To say that Mary’s reasons are simply part of who she is, and that’s that, is exactly what the determinist says.
To say that Mary’s reasons are simply part of who she is, is to say that these reasons of Mary’s are not created by any other of Mary’s reasons,

That does not follow. The reasons Mary has at time T can be both part of what she is at time T,
and the result of her thoughts and feelings at time T-1. Determinists assume we cannot
form our own characters; I flatly deny that.

and it begs the question of “how did Mary get to be who she is in the first place, and how can it come about that she can be held responsible for who she is?”.

It doesn't "beg the question" in the sense of petitio principi. For the naturalistic libertarian, there
is causal story about how she is the way she is, just as there is for the determinist. Not the same
kind of story, of course.

And she can be held responsible for just the reasons I have outlined before.

The determinists and free will skeptics would agree with the libertarian that Mary’s reasons must be grounded in some X which has no antecedent causal states which may be further attributed to Mary as a responsible individual. Where the libertarian differs is that she assumes there are no antecedent states prior to this X, and that X somehow brings itself into existence not arbitrarily but (somehow) under Mary’s control

That is the model of Libertarianism I am replacing. -- the assumption that the same X has to explain
both Origination and Rational Self Control.

To the non-libertarian, the concept that an agent’s reasons may be ultimately grounded in something which is neither determined nor arbitrary is simply inconsistent or incoherent.

That concept only arises when you assume that the same primitive, indivisible X has to explain
both Origination and Rational Self Control.

If determinism and indeterminism are all we have to choose from, then these fundamental reasons X that Mary possesses, the reasons which cannot be traced back to any other of Mary’s reasons, must themselves either have a source which is either determined or arbitrary (this is the approach taken by all camps except for the supernaturalist libertarians), or if neither determined nor arbitrary then the source of Mary’s X must be supernatural (ie beyond rational or logical explanation – this is the approach taken by supernaturalist libertarians).

Mary's reasons need not have a single source. They are the outcome of , and part
of a complex process.

An action that is not brough about externally, is brough about internally.
Quite. But my question was in fact :

Your definition does not mention UR. Do you believe one can have free will without UR?

UR -- specifically causal originative power -- is "bringing about internally", of course.

 

[Tournesol]

http://www.staff.brad.ac.uk/fweinert/QMConference.htm Sommerfeld, de Broglie and the later Born adopted the Philosophical Response. This view leads to a separation of the notions of causality and determinism. It holds that even though determinism fails, causal accounts may still be given in quantum mechanics. This required a notion of probabilistic causality.[2] A probabilistic notion of causality no longer satisfies the demand for precise spatio-temporal prediction of trajectories. Individual atoms in an atom beam, split in a Stern-Gerlach apparatus, have a 50% chance of traveling along the upper or the lower trajectory. But it is still possible to give a causal account of the splitting of the atom beam and the chances of individual atoms to travel along the split beams. Similarly many of the famous experiments, which established quantum mechanics, give rise to causal accounts: the Frank-Hertz experiment (1914), the Stern-Gerlach experiments (1920), Compton Scattering (1923) and the Davison-Germer experiment (1927) can all be given a causal interpretation, based on the notion of probabilistic causality. A thought experiment due to de Broglie's perfectly illustrates this new notion of causality.

 

[moving finger]

Hi Tournesol

I have stated why we have reason to think causation is probablistic. You haven't stated why the word "cause" is being misapplied, only that it is.

Why do you think smoking “causes” cancer, as opposed to there being a correlation between incidences of smoking and incidences of cancer?

The large-scale structure of the cosmos was not caused by our inability to predict something.

How do you know this? Do you know what caused (or did not cause) the large-scale structure of the cosmos?

I am reflecting usage, not dictating it.

Who’s usage? I for one don’t say “smoking causes cancer”. You are making an inference about the meaning of the verb “to cause” when used by a particular group of people who use phrases such as “smoking causes cancer”. It does not follow from this that causation in the general sense of the word is probabilistic, and certainly not in the scientific sense of the word.

The idea that that is a misconception is entirely based on your dictat that the word "cause" has only a strictly determinsitic meaning, which is contradicted by common usage, and which you have not justified in any way.

I am not dictating anything. I am simply saying that there is no credible scientific evidence that causation (in the scientific sense of the word causation) is probabilistic. The misconception is in your generalisation from the fact that some people choose to use phrases such as “smoking causes cancer”, to the unsafe conclusion that causation is therefore probabilistic. To infer basic scientific principles from the way words are used by a certain group of people is unwise. For example, many people also use phrases like “the operating system is responsible for controlling the machine” or “a launch-day foam strike was responsible for the Columbia disaster” or “radon is responsible for about 21,000 lung cancer deaths every year”, but they (think they) are not using the term “responsibility” in the same way that it would be used when attributing responsibility to human agents.

Since determinsim and correlation have well-defined meanings, and since cause has de facto mutiple meanings, it seems sensible to use cause to fill in the middle ground.

I disagree – precisely because it leads to the kind of misconceptions you are promoting. If you wish to define causation as meaning probabilistic causation I have no problem with this, but then we will need to invent another word to refer to deterministic causation. Using the same word to refer to both deterministic and probabilistic causation leads to misundersatanding and ambiguity.

I know. But scientific truth is defined by the results of experiments, not the pesonal opinons of scientists.

Correct – and so far nobody has shown definitively that the world is either completely deterministic or partly probabilistic at the quantum level. The correct view is therefore to remain open-minded about both possibilities. My point is that, given what we currently know about the world, the premise of indeterminism adds nothing in terms of explanatory power.

Indeed. Hence my campaign to speak in terms of neccseary cause, sufficient cause, trigger cause, background cause, etc.

As far as this goes I agree – my disagreement all along (I keep repeating this) is in your claim that we have good reason to believe causation is probabilistic. This is an incorrect generalisation. The most you can correctly say is “we have good reason to believe that the type of relationship referred to in common usage phrases such as ‘smoking causes lung cancer’ is likely to be a correlation rather than a strict causation in the scientific sense of the word causation”

it is no interpretation to say that we see correlations: that is just a statement of prima-facie facts. The point of an interpretation is to explain the PF facts -- to say what causes them , in some sense of "cause".

Do you know of any such explanation?
All we see is correlations and regularities, and we try to capture these regularities with descritions that we then call “laws of nature”. What is a “cause” but a perfect correlation or regularity? If B always follows A, then we might say that A “causes” B.

They do indeed often refrain from making "ontic" comments. However, in doing so they refrain from interpretation. It is somtimes said that the most common interpretation of QM is "shut up and calculate". That is a joke because SUAC is not in fact an interpretation.

I agree. But SUAC is a reflection of the fact that all we have is our measurements, and at the quantum level to infer any particular ontic reality from such measurements is problematic - I believe impossible. The HUP places a limit on what we can know about the world – what we know is what we measure, but what we measure is a convolution of the measured and the measurer – we cannot deconvolve this to get the measured in isolation. All attempts at ontic interpretation beyond the HUP are speculation.

If we are not going to interpret, we might as well not bother doing science -- it would just be "stamp collecting".

I agree, but pure speculation is not science. If an hypothesis does not make testable predictions then by definition its not a scientific hypothesis. Science is thus limited to hypotheses which make predictions that can be tested. (This is why concepts such as God, Tooth Fairies and all manner of supernatural phenomena are outside the scope of science – and I think you and I have similar feelings on the acceptability of supernatural “explanations”).

Of course, no-one has a problem with interpretation when it looks like we are going to havc a nice determinsistic, classical interpretation.

I have no problem with an indeterministic interpretation, I just don’t see (a) any reliable evidence that the world is indeed indeterministic and (b) what possible explanatory power an indeterministic interpretation would have.

People tend to become sudden converts to irrealism/instrumentalism when faced with the horrible prospect of abandoning determinsim, IME.

I’m not a determinist, I simply see no usefulness or efficacy in the premise of indeterminsim. I don’t see how the premise of indeterminism aids in our understanding of anything about the world.

If you are going to equate knowledge with certainty, then we don't know anything else either. Science is nothing but best guesses from top to bottom.

Science (along with all other rational and logical endeavour) is based on making inferences from premises or assumptions (usually supported by experiment). One may challenge the premises and one may challenge the inferences. I am challenging your inference that we have good reason to think causation is probabilistic.

The Aspect experiment rules out local hidden variables. The only remaining recourse for the determinist is therefore a non-local HV theory, but no-one has
been able to construct a relativisable one.

There is as yet no consensus on any complete theory which correctly explains QM relativistically – deterministic or otherwise. There are plenty of references in the scientific literature, including papers which show that relativistic HV theories are inherently no more problematic than relativistic non-HV theories.

The fundamental problem is causality: if two events with a space-like separation are non-locally linked, as in EPR experiments, which comes first? What one needs is a privileged frame, whether defined by the presence of God (as Newton thought) or of the ether (as the Maxwellians thought) or in a more abstract way.

No “privileged frame” is needed - the writer needs to “think outside the box” – he’s obviously not considered advanced waves as a means of interpreting what is going on in entanglement.

Try explaining the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment of entangled states (here https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=1048085#post1048085) any other way than by assuming a combination of hidden variables and some kind of advanced wave interaction (a la Cramer’s transactional interpretation) – I don’t know of any other way to interpret that experiment (and I don’t know of anyone who has suggested another successful interpretation – all the scientists just reply with “SUAC”). As you said yourself – scientific truth is determined by the results of experiments, not by opinions.

The large scale structure of the universe is not caused by your ignorance.

How do you know this?

"Limitations on knowledge" is hidden variables. The evidence goes beyond that one class of hidden variable theory has been ruled out.

So what? I have never denied that QM suggests the world is either “not real” or “not local” (or both). But we have no way of knowing which, if either, of these is true. Most scientists seem to prefer to give up the idea of locality.

It is no more a leap of faith than insisting that unrpedictable things are nonetheless deterministic in ways we cannot fathom. In fact, the probablistic alernative is preferreable by Occam's razor.

I disagree. We cannot “fathom” anything beyond the HUP – that is a principle which is true regardless of ontic reality. But we know there are deterministic relationships in the world (the Schroedinger wave equation evolves completely deterministically, and certain quantum events are deterministic) – thus determinism exists. The question now is whether the world is also in some respects indeterministic, or simply indeterminable. If we have no way of deciding whether the world is indeterministic or not then Occam’s razor would favour rejecting the premise of indeterminism, because it does not explain anything which we cannot already explain with determinism (which we know exists at least in certain cases).

To my mind, “prejudice” is exemplified by an irrational belief in the premise of probabilistic causation when there is no need for such a premise.

I have given several examples of where there is a need.

And there is an alternative explanation in every case (which you ignore) in terms of indeterminability rather than indeterminism.

It is the determinists who are claiming the existence of additional,
unnecessary entitities, and who must therefore answer to the Razor.

It all depends on whether one is more interested in “multiplying unnecessary concepts”, or “multiplying unnecessary variables”.

On the one hand we already know certain relationships are deterministic in this world. Therefore to extrapolate and suggest that all relationships are deterministic (and we just don’t know all the variables yet) is simply a logical extension of an existing known concept.

On the other hand, if we are to postulate that some relationships are probabilistic rather than deterministic then we maybe save on the total number of variables we need to describe the world, but at the cost of inventing a new concept – indeterminism.

Whether one prefers to use the razor to cut out extra unnecessary variables (your choice), or extra unnecessary concepts (my choice), is a matter of personal preference.

Best Regards

 

[moving finger]

Hi Again Tournesol

It is not grounded in any single, basic, atomic factor that does all the work, all at one.
It is grounded in both determinism and indeteminsim interacting over time in a complex and specfic way.

But what specific way? Apart from simply indulging in handwaving, I don’t see how you have explained how this combination causes the emergence of ultimate responsibility.

In your RIG/SIS this arbitrary statrting state is the indeterministic nature of the RIG. Are you seriously suggesting that one can be ultimately responsible for a chain of events which originates in indeterminism?

Yes, because the SIS filters out the activity of the RIG.

But in your model the SIS is a “given”, isn’t it? I am surely not ultimately responsible for my SIS, so how can I have UR for the way my SIS filters out the RIG? (If you are going to reply that I do have UR for my SIS, then you will need to further explain how it comes about that I have UR for my SIS, without falling into infinite regress – remember that your model is supposed to show how UR arises as an emergent property when there is no UR in any of the individual components).

This is the basic problem that any naturalistic attempt to explain free will must address – how free will and UR can arise as emergent properties of a system when there is no free will or UR in any of the individual components of the system. It is easy to “create” free will (or UR) when one assumes that there is a component in the system which already possesses UR (just as it is easy for a magician to pull a rabbit out of a hat when he has already concealed a pre-existing rabbit somewhere in his apparatus) – but to show where that UR itself came from leads to infinite regress.

Tournesol – I am sure you are aware that you are one of the few naturalistic libertarians who has had the courage to present a detailed model of how free will originates – and that is very commendable and I congratulate you on that. Notable libertarians such as Kane have not had the temerity to attempt such a thing – instead they use vague language and hand-waving and ambiguous expressions such as “self-forming will” – because they know that causa sui leads to infinite regress and there is no way that it can actually be modeled in practice. Anyone who wants to model free will in a naturalistic way must address the infinite regress problem of ultimate responsibility – if you cannot show how UR is created within your model as an emergent property then your ideas will not stand up to scrutiny. And being the rational and meticulous person that I know you are, I don’t see how you can ignore this point.

(If you have your own definition, fine: just don't accuse me of internal inconsistency when the problem is actually extrinsic.

Tournesol, you can’t hide from the problem of infinite regress by simply using a different definition (unless you wish to destroy UR completely and define it as just causal responsibility plain and simple, in the same sense that falling tiles were responsible for the Columbia disaster). Your definition is :

(UR), the idea that there is a genuine sense in which you are the originator of your voluntary acts, and therefore bear responsibility for them.

I have already replied above that this definition is (imho) poor, because it simply defines “responsibility” in terms of “origination” – thus we are left with the question of how “origination” is defined. But for the sake of argument let’s go with your definition.

Now, how can I be the “genuine originator” of an act which is grounded in a random event? If you reply that my responsibility is via my SIS, then you need to show how it comes about that I am the “genuine originator” of my SIS (in your model the SIS is simply taken as a “given” idea selection algorithm, you have not shown how it can come about that an agent can acquire ultimate responsibility for its SIS – presumably the UR inherent in the SIS must emerge from some nested Darwinian model – which leads again to infinite regress).

This is the “smoke and mirrors” juggling tactic of the naturalist libertarian magician – to claim that UR is somehow a mysterious combination of determinism and indeterminism (hopping on the determinism foot when his explanation is accused of leading to caprice, and then hopping on the indeterminism foot when his explanation is accused of being deterministic – and hoping that by hopping fast enough from one foot to the other he can somehow “create” an illusion of ultimate responsibility where it doesn't actually exist), without showing exactly how these two can actually combine to produce genuine UR. Your “Darwinian model” certainly doesn’t do it.

That is rhetoric. There is no real argument there.

You have not shown that your model possesses UR. In a number of threads I have asked you to explain on what basis you claim your model possesses UR – and you have not done so (you have simply shown that it acts rationally but unpredictably). One way to do it would be to define the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for UR, and then to show that your model meets these conditions. You have also not done this. Another way to do it would be to explain just how the UR emerges when there is no UR in any of the components. You have also not done this.

Either I possesses UR for my RIG or SIS in isolation, or I do not. If I do not possesses UR for my RIG, and I do not possesses UR for my SIS, then you need to explain how you think it emerges that I can possesses UR from the model where they act in combination.

If I do possesses UR for either my RIG or my SIS, then you need to explain how it comes about that I possesses that UR – presumably from another underlying Darwinian model (a lower-level model)? And you know where this leads…..

If you can do neither of the above then your model is incoherent – something I have said all along.

The fundamental problem with modelling any kind of naturalistic free will/UR is that the libertarian must assume UR is emergent from the model, and not contained in any of the components. But if each component is either deterministic or indeterministic, and I possesses UR for none of them in isolation, then how can I possesses UR when they act in combination? (Supernaturalistic libertarians would not appeal to supernature if they thought this trick could be accomplished in the natural world).

Tournesol - this is not rhetoric – this is legitimate rational and logical criticism of your model and a challenge for you to defend your model. You may dismiss this as “rhetoric” if you wish – but doing so doesn’t do much for the credibility of your model.

How could we tell whether your Darwinian model gives rise to UR?

By showing that it fulfils the criteria for UR that I have stated, i.e it gives rise to both an originative power and rational self contol.

You have not shown that it is a “genuine originator” (as opposed to being an indeterminable but rational decision making system). An agent which acts indeterminably but rationally does not necessarily possesses UR.

UR means having both an originative power and rational self contol, and it is genuine if it is based on more than mere social convention.

This again begs the question of the definition of “originative power”. How would you go about showing that your model has originative power (as opposed to being simply indeterministic but rational)?

Are you seriously suggesting that one can be ultimately responsible for a chain of events which originates in indeterminism?

Yes, if you also have rational self control.

But how am I ultimately responsible for my “rational self-control”? Either my self-control arose according to deterministic processes, or to indeterministic processes, or a combination of both. How can I be ultimately responsible for something that is the result of deterministic or indeterministic processes? If you claim that my responsibility for my “self-control” arises through another Darwinian process then once again we are off into infinite regress……

Where exactly does speciation arise ? It is a complex process, not something that happens atomically at a single point. Is Darwinism (per se) smoke and mirrors for failing to say exactly when and where speciation occurs ?

The analogy is ridiculous. Speciation is an arbitrary boundary defined by (interpreted by) man, but UR is something fundamental – either an agent possesses UR or it does not. Evolution by natural selection does not assume there is necessarily any particular speciation boundary – it only assumes that individuals compete for resources, that they have different characteristics and they tend to pass on these characteristics to their offspring (where some mutation may occur).

Your model does not show how UR can arise when there is no UR in any of the components of the model.

If you are saying that the interaction of SIS and RIG does not explain UR, you have to say why.

And you also have to say why you believe it does (your explanations so far have been in terms of indeterminable and rational behaviour – but such behaviour does not entail UR).

The RIG is not the source of UR, it simply generates random ideas – how can an agent be “responsible” for a random idea? You seem to agree with this, and your response to this is that the SIS “filters out the activity of the RIG” – implying that the agent’s UR somehow lies in the rational activity of the SIS. But since we know that the agent has no UR for the components of the model, then the agent does not have UR for the SIS. The deterministic operation of the SIS is not something the agent has responsibility for – the SIS algorithm just “is”. The SIS makes a rational choice, yes, but how can the agent be responsible for that choice, when it has no responsibility (in the sense of UR) for the SIS itself?

If you are going to reply that the agent DOES have UR for the SIS, then we need another lower-level Darwinian model to explain where that SIS-UR originates….. and so on….. we are into infinite regress.

The SIS gives us rational self-control over our actions and decision, including those that have repercussions for our character.

It gives rational control, yes, but it is not a source of UR (unless you want to dive into infinite regress), as explained above

Whatever. Most libertarians are supernaturalists.

And for very good reason (many of them recognise that one cannot create UR naturalistically)

I am explaining FW and UR as I have defined them.

Even using your definition of UR, there is no way UR can emerge from your model (as explained above)

Determinists assume we cannot form our own characters; I flatly deny that.

I disagree. Even if I assume determinism, I believe we can form our own characters (a deterministic computer operating to a self-learning algorithm would be continuously forming and re-forming its internal algorithms). But what we cannot do is to possesses ultimate responsibility for what we are, because UR (like causa sui) is an incoherent concept.

It doesn't "beg the question" in the sense of petitio principi. For the naturalistic libertarian, there is causal story about how she is the way she is, just as there is for the determinist. Not the same kind of story, of course.

The naturalistic libertarian story is incoherent (or at best incomplete).

That concept only arises when you assume that the same primitive, indivisible X has to explain both Origination and Rational Self Control.

Not at all. Ultimate responsibility is the fundamental property that needs to be explained – and hopping from determinism to indeterminism and back again in an attempt to escape the explanation doesn’t work. Indeterminism gives me origination without UR, and “rational self control” allows me to filter that indeterminism so that I act rationally – but where does the UR come in? If I do indeed have UR for my “rational self control” then how did that arise and where did it come from? From another lower-level Darwinian model perhaps? Infinite regress again…..

Mary's reasons need not have a single source. They are the outcome of , and part of a complex process.

Trying to take refuge in multiple sources is no solution.

Umberto Eco seemed to express very well the impossibility of trying to flee from the problem of infinite regress by taking refuge in multiple causes in his novel Foucault's Pendulum :

You cannot escape one infinity, I told myself, by fleeing to another; you cannot escape the revelation of the identical by taking refuge in the illusion of the multiple

(from Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum)

There is no rational or logical way that any combination of multiple different sources, each of which Mary has no UR for, can come together to produce something for which she does have UR. The best you can hope for is that you can hop from your indeterminism foot to your determinism foot when someone claims that your model is capricious, and hop back again to your indeterminism foot when someone claims it is deterministic - keep hopping quickly back and forth and you lead a merry dance which might fool the gullible. But no mix of determinism and indeterminism creates UR.

Best Regards

 

[Manchot]

All I know is that if QM is non-deterministic, then so is the macroscopic world. Why? For the past couple months, every time that I need to make a decision where I don't care that much about the outcome, I use this website (which uses a computer chip that generates random bits by passing a photon through a 50% reflector and measuring whether it was reflected or not) as a sort of coin flipper.

 

[Tournesol]

This is all getting a bit long-winded, but
I am going to reply to some of your older posts.

I never said your theory is wrong *because* it is naturalistic. I do not believe any theory of free will can be both coherent and complete, because I do not believe the concept of free will itself is a coherent notion.

If "incoherent" means anything , it means internally inconistent. Yet you have never
shown any *internal* problem -- that I am falining
to support the reality of the definition of FW *I* am using.
You keep coming back to the "mixture" issue. There is no reason, givn my
definition of FW, that it should not be a mixture. So it is not an internal
problem. I also haven't explained why FW doesn't operate on thrursdays. If you think
FW doesn't operate on thursdays, that is your problem -- it is external as far
as i ama concerned,a nd it cnanot therefore support a charge of incoherence.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tournesol
The naturalistic concept of free will, or the supertnatural one ?
As I said, I do not believe the concept of free will is coherent. By this I mean libertarian (as opposed to compatibilist) free will, free will which entails UR. UR is an incoherent notion. The supernatural “explanation” for free will avoids the incoherency by pushing the explanation beyond the bounds of rationality and logic (basically “and then a miracle happens”). The naturalistic “explanation” cannot do this, thus it fails to be either complete or coherent or both.

So you say. You have not demonstrated this.

The important issue is that steel DOES differ from a simple mixture of iron and carbon, and no metallurgist would suggest that we could create steel by simply stirring together carbon granules and iron filings in a bowl.

I explain specificall how deteminsim and indetemrinsim are combined, That is what the SIS/RIG stuff is about.
Why do you thik I put it in ?

Of course you don’t have to explain your model at all

I *have* explained my model. You cannot be unaware of the SIS/RIG setup, we have discussed it before.

. But if you want anyone to take your model seriously then you will need to go to some trouble to explain why you think it qualifies as a mechanism for free will, and defending those ideas.

Of course. That is why I wrote
http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_darwin.html

If you don’t wish to go to that trouble, then you shouldn’t be surprised if people like myself dismiss your ideas as idle flights of fancy.

You have read my article. Why are you pretending it doesn't exist ?

Untrue. I reject any approach to explaining libertarian free will because I do not believe in UR. I believe the notion of UR is incoherent. And without UR you cannot have (libertarian) free will.

You still haven't said what is incoherent about it. Counterclaims require explanation
just as much as claims. FYI.

I can (in principle) easily program a computer which behaves rationally yet unpredictably. Does it follow that the computer necessarily possesses free will?

The "rationallity" bit isn't so easy. The AI community has been trying to do that for years.
But this is another objection I have ALREADY ANSWERED in http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_darwin.html

Natural and Artificial Free Will

If you propose a mechanism for free will, you have to face the possibiity that it can be mechanised. People say
"but you could build your Darwian free-will mechanism into a computer!" as though that is a flat impossibility. Surely,
that is a hang-over from the supernatural assumption. I am fairly agnostic about the possibility of aritificial
intelligence. If there is a problem with reproducing human mentation in a machine, the problem lies with consciosuness,
specifically phenomenal consciousness. Since I do not make the Supernatural Assumption, I do not see a specific
problem with free will. That does not mean that I think the computer I am using to write this sentence has free will;
I see free will as an integral part of human mentality (not as something metahphysically Basic, or Separable), so I
would not consider a machine to posess free will unless it could reproduce other aspects of human mentality;
and some of the other aspects, such as phenomenal consciousness, pose more of a problem.

"the power or ability to rationally choose and consciously perform actions, at least some of which are not brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances".
This definition does not explicitly include UR. (Rational and conscious behaviour does not entail UR, and indeterministic processes do not entail UR).

The conjunction of ratioallity and indeterminism *does* entail, UR, as I have explained.

UR has two main components. (1) a Casual Originative Power, the ability to do something that is not the inevitable outcome of external influences, and (2) rational self-control: we do not attribute moral responsibility to entities that lack rational self control even if they can "do the unexpected".

Ideally, UR should have an objective explanation (rather than a conventional one, like deeming certain pieces of paper to be "money"). For naturalists, it should have ane explanation grounded in physics. The hypothesis of indeterminism can fulfil the role of an explanation of Causal Originative Power aspect of UR as well as being the obvious explanation for AP.

An indeterministic cause is an event which is not itself the effect of a prior cause. Thus, if you trace a cause-effect chain backwards it will come to a halt at an indetermistic cause; the indeterministic cause stands at the "head" of a cause-effect chain. Thus, such causes can pin down the UR, the originative power, of agents.

There are two important things to realize at this point:

Firstly, I am not saying that indeterministic causes correspond one-to-one to human decisions or actions. It takes billions of basic physical events to produce an action or decision. The claim that indeterminism is part of this complex process does not mean that individual decisions are "just random". (As we expand here). We will go onto propose that there are other mechansims which filter out random impulses, so that there is rational self-control as well as casual originative power, and thus both criteria for UR are met.

Secondly, I am also not saying that indeterminism by itself is a fully sufficient criterion for agenthood. If physical indeterminism is widespread (as argued here), that would attribute free will to all sorts of unlikely agents, such as decaying atoms. Our theory requires some additional criteria. There is no reason why these should not be largely the same criteria used by compatibilists and supercompatibilists -- rule-following rationallity, lack of external compulsion, etc. Where their criteria do not go far enough, we can supplement them with UR and AP. Where their criteria attribute free will too widely to entities, our supplementary criteria will narrow the domain.
And everything in my model of FW fulfils the conditions implicit in that.

Your model does not include consciousness. Your model only addresses the “rational” and “indeterministic” criteria – but it does not follow that an entity which includes rational and indeterministic criteria necessarily possesses either free will or UR.

Yes it does. I have explained every aspect of FW, and fulfilled every criterion, so I have
explained FW. There is no mysterious X-factor left over. Your objection is a non-onjection.
It is like saying "it has got walls, windows, a door and a roof, but it isn't a house".

If "coherent" means anythig, it mean *internally* consistent.

Which causa sui is not

"Causa sui" means self-caused. It is not FW as I have defined it, and is therefore not relevant.

As Nietzsche said :

The causa sui is the best self-contradiction that has been conceived so far, it is a sort of rape and perversion of
logic. But the extravagant pride of man has managed to entangle itself profoundly and frightfully with just this
nonsense. The desire for ‘freedom of the will’ in the superlative metaphysical sense, which still holds sway,
unfortunately, in the minds of the half-educated; the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s
actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance and society involves nothing less than to be
precisely this causa sui and, with more than Baron Munchhausen’s audacity, to pull oneself up into existence by the
hair, out of the swamps of nothingness……

He seems to have got two different ideas mixed up, poor guy.

Bringing in *external* defintiions of FW does *not* demonstrate incoherence.

What external definition of free will are you referring to?

The one, according to which it cannot possible be a mixture. Admitedly, you have never
given an explicit definition along those lines. OTOH, the fact that you are
operating from some unstated position is hardly in your favour.

Do you deny that UR is a necessary condition for libertarian free will?

UR is connected with moral responsibility. That is not quite the same
as FW, as semicompatiblist arguments show

If we agree it is, then it surely must figure in any definition of free will.

I can, in fact support UR, so that is not much of an objection.

Indeed, you do not even attempt to analyse what you think might be the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for Free Will
Quote:

Yes I do: AP. UR, rationality.

UR I agree with but you missed this critical component from your above definition. And I think UR is not only necessary,
but by itself is sufficient for free will. But that simply begs the question : What are the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for UR? In your Darwinian model you do not show that the model possesses either UR or free will.

The necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for UR are Causal Origination and Rational Self Control.

Please could you show why you think it doesn’t follow? I am claiming the two models are indistinguishable – if you consider that my claim is incorrect then please do show how we might be able to distinguish between the two models.

Some people claim it is impossible in principle to empirically detect the difference between real, intrinsic randomness and pseudo-randomness. Whilst initially plausible, this is in fact doubtful as sophisticated procedures like the Aspect experiment show.

The Aspect experiment shows nothing of the kind.

The Aspect experiment rules out one form of pseudo-radomness , i.e local hidden variables.
Therefore, it is possible to empirically test real randomness vs pseudo-randomness to some extent.

The Aspect experiment does not exclude non-local hidden variables (although other physical
consideration wheigh against them). Thus it is not smoking-gun proof of real randomness.
But I never claimed it was. I only claimed that it is possible to empirically investigate the subject.

No, the thrust of the argument is EITHER free will does not entail indeterminism, OR free will is epiphenomenal.

huh ?

The possibillity of indeterminism-based free will is thus established even if the truth of indeterminsim based free-will is epistemically inaccessible. "it is not necessarily true" is no rebuttal to "it is possible".

Anything that does not entail logical contradiction is logically possible – but that is no reason to believe that things exist in our world simply because they do not entail logical contradiction – on this basis I would believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Leprechauns, Tokoloshes and all manner of weird and wonderful things.

True but irrelevant. You are claiming that FW is "incohorent" -- logically self-contradictory. I am claiming
exaclty the opposite; it is *not* self contradictory. That dosns't mean it actually exists. Now:
how about addressing the claims I am actually making.

Naturalistic libertarian free will, if it entails UR, entails an infinite regress.

Why ?

An infinite regress
is certainly “possibly true”, but would not be given much credibility as an explanatory theory of anything.

You seem to have pulled the infinite regress issue out of thin air.

I could suggest a thesis which says leprechauns (but only green ones) are psychic, except in the presence of Santa Claus, but their psychic powers are boosted when in the presence of the Tooth Fairy. My thesis might not be true, but you cannot prove it false – and that places my thesis in the same category as your thesis. But I wouldn’t expect anyone to take me seriously.

True but irrelvant. There is an established belief in FW (unlike
your leprechauns) and people *do* claim FW is nonetheless logically impossible.
There is a claim to be defended and a claim to be answered.

 

[Tournesol]

If he desires to vote for Kerry, why is it suddenly *not* his desire if Black is waiting in the background to force
him to vote for Kerry if he would decide not to vote for Kerry.

Originally Posted by Tournesol
It *is* his desire to vote for Kerry. And he *can* do otherwise -- or at least, wish otherwise. Becasue something has has to
trigger Black's mechanism.

You have put your finger right on the button. We are now moving from the original libertarian premise of “could have done
otherwise” to a new premise of “could have wished otherwise”. You obviously concede from this move that it might be the case that
Black could ensure that Jones could NOT do otherwise (“do” in the sense of “act”), and now you wish to push the point of interest
back before the moment of action, to the moment of wishing. But Black can move his neural intervention back too, so that he detects
the neural precursors (the antecedent mental states) to the “wish”, and by doing so he can ensure that Jones either “wishes” to vote
for Kerry of his own accord (of his own free will) or (if Black detects neural activity which suggests Jones may instead wish to vote
for Bush) then Black intervenes and forces a “wish” to vote for Kerry. In this case, not only could Jones not have “done” otherwise,
he also could not have “wished” otherwise.

I don’t need to explain that this procedure can be placed as far back in the “decision process” as we like. The argument you are
using here is basically the “flicker of freedom” argument, which ends up pushing the flicker back so far down the causal chain
that it eventually extinguishes itself in randomness. For a more detailed examination, see Diana Hsieh, in Defending Alternate
Possibilities, here :

http://www.dianahsieh.com/docs/dap.pdfIf we apply Black’s device to your Darwinian model, and push it as far back as we can, then Black eventually ends up monitoring the
output of the RIG – and then sending countermanding instructions to the SIS if he decides to intervene.

He could just as well adjust the SIS itself, since it is the function of the SIS to filter
possible courses of action in the first place.

In your model, it is the RIG,
and not the SIS, which is effectively “making the decisions” for Jones

No; different parameters in the SIS will make a difference. (Random mutation does not drive ther
direction of evolution).

– and these RIG decisions are of course completely arbitrary

The RIG does not make decisions, only suggestions.

(they have to be, to fulfill the arbitrary libertarian requirement of alternate possibilities)….. that’s ultimately where your
so-called “flicker of freedom” comes from.

Yes, the RIG is where the freedom comes from. It's not where the responsibility comes
from. If you could show that the freedom entails lack of responsibility,
you would be on to something. But you can't. If you could show
that Black's device would work in the absence of any kind of alternative
possibilities, you would be onto something. But you can't.

And as for those idiot metallurgists, thinking steel is a mixtureof iron and carbon...

Any metallurgist who does think that steel is “simply” a mixture of iron and carbon is indeed an idiot – steel is a very particular
kind of mixture, put together in a particular way – “any old mixture” of iron and carbon will not necessarily give you steel.
And “any old mixture” of determinism and indeterminism will not necessarily give you ultimate responsibility and free will.
The point is that you cannot explain just why one particular mixture should give ultimate responsibility and another one not.

Yes I can. That is what the RIG and SIS explain. If you want to continue with this,
you need to explain which particular aspect of FW has been left unexplained.

The point in time is irrelevant - the only relevant issue is the outcome.

says who ?

says “could have done otherwise”. There is no temporal constraint in the phrase.

Then the outcome is no more significant than the "flicker".

Of course if you now wish to change that requirement to “could have wished otherwise” or “could have willed otherwise” or
“could have thought otherwise” then that’s fine – but shifting the goalposts doesn’t change the basic argument (as shown above).

Then why do the libertarians insist that free will entails “could have done otherwise”?

Standard libertariansim needs refinement in order to work.

If only the wish, and not the act, is
important, it follows that what he could have “done” is irrelevant to whether he has free will or not.

Wishes that can never be acted on are nto a kind of FW worth wanting. However, you can
still have "in principle" FW even if youcan't act on certain specific decisions.

I have shown the flaw. Responsibility lies with freely-chose intentions.

And I have shown the flaw in your “flicker of freedom” argument. Black’s intervention can be moved back to the neural states
antecedent to the moment of Jones forming his conscious choice, so that Jones’ conscious choice is always to vote for Kerry
(he cannot choose otherwise), but in one case Black does not intervene (Jones chooses freely) and in the other (when he sees that
Jones neural states indicate that he will form a choice to vote for Bush) he does intervene (Jones does not choose freely).

How do you know that the antecedent to an intention is not another intention ?

What is wrong or missing, do you think, from the following suggested necessary conditions :

1) I did X
2) I wanted to do X
3) I understand the consequences of doing X and of not doing X, and I understand right and wrong.

If an entity meets all 3 of the above conditions, why would we say that entity is not responsible for the act of doing X

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tournesol
It doesn't answer counterexamples about hypnotically-implanted suggestions, compulsions,etc.

This is why my original (2) was :

2a) I would have done X, even if I could have done otherwise

Which would answer the hypnosis and compulsion (and Frankfurt) cases. Perhaps you prefer condition 2a to condition 2?

2a doesn't answer counterxamples about addictions and other compulsions. And the wholething
doesn't suggest that you can actually act on your sense of right and wrong, by refraning
from doing what you, absent morality, wnat to do.

Does a person under hypnosis “want” to do X? How could we tell?

We can tell that the hypnotic suggestion does not have hte
causal history that characterises a free choice.

In what sense is a person with a compulsion not responsible for what he does, as long as he does it willingly (ie he wants to do it)

You mean over and above the compulsion?

and he understands the consequences of what he does?

If his consious desires line up with the compulsion, then the responsibility is mixed.
For instance, drug addicts who come to the attention of the law are offered treatment programmes.
If they fail to make any effort -- if the "go along" with their addiction -- they are
then treated more punitively.

what additional necessary conditions for responsibility would you add, or what would you change, to answer the counterexamples you
have suggested?

2: the want needs to have the right causal history.

3: A sense of right and wrong is of no use
unless it can override what you would otherwise do.

(understanding that we cannot add “free will” or “ultimate responsibility” as conditions, because this simply
results in a tautology, and we cannot add “could have xxxxx otherwise”, where xxxxx stands for done/wished/willed/chosen etc
because the Frankfurt cases show that this is not a necessary condition for responsibility)

The Frankfurt cases you quote are not a knowck-down arguemnt. The Hsieh paper itself
says so.

The main reason is because nobody, including yourself, has come up with a plausible and coherent mechanism which shows how free will
works.

This is going in circles. if I ask you why my mechanism isn't "plausible and coherent", you just produce the fictitious
"mixture" issue.

The best anyone can do is a form of hand-waving with a conclusion “well it looks like it could make reasonable and unpredictable
decisions, so I guess it has free will”.

Puh-leaze

"If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck it is a duck".

Free will (of the libertarian kind) entails ultimate responsibility (UR). To have Free Will, an agent must be ultimately
responsible for its actions. The problem we face is in defining exactly, in a coherent and rational fashion, just what is meant
by UR. Most libertarian accounts of Free Will gloss over the interpretation of UR and do not enter into detailed examination of the
coherency of the concept. A typical example :

“Freedom is not mere caprice, nor does it lie in being the puppet of circumstances, it is self-determination, a gradual evolution of
selfhood”

This kind of freedom definitely sounds like something we would all like to have. But is it a coherent notion, or is it just a
warm and fuzzy feeling? If incoherent, then the notion is simply an idle fantasy. Self-determination is another libertarian way of
saying that to be free we must be ultimately responsible for what we do. The tricky thing with UR is that to be ultimately responsible
for what you do, you must also be ultimately responsible for the way you are (because the way you are, in absence of mere caprice,
determines what you do). But to be ultimately responsible for the way you are, you would have to have intentionally brought it about
that you are the way you are. Intentionality is a fundamental aspect of UR (if what we do is not what we intend to do, how can we be
held ultimately responsible for what we do?). But to intentionally bring about a certain state N, you must have had a prior state N-1
which led to the intentional development of your state N (if N is an arbitrary state in the sense that you had no state prior to N
which intentionally brought about state N, then you can hardly be responsible for state N, can you?). But this also means that state
N-1 must have been brought about intentionally in a similar fashion, which means there must have been some prior intentional state
N-2…… and so on ad infinitum. UR thus entails an infinite regress of intentional states. The only escape from such regress is to
postulate either some arbitrary intentional starting state, or that the self is somehow magically and mystically able to pull
itself up by its own bootstraps, the original causa sui (cause of itself). Your Darwinian model vacillates between the two.

You are mistakenly assuming that FW must be devoid of any outside influence whatosever.

Without that assumption, the causal chain "fades out", like the First Mammal.

I would say the notion that free will actually exists (as opposed to being an illusion) is a pre-scientific idea.

As are: "memory exists" , "intelligence exists", "thought exists".

Good thing its just the pre-scientific explanation that is wrong, not the pre-scientific idea.

No you don’t. You think free will actually exists, and is a particular (not just any old) mixture of indeterminism
(not indeterminability) and determinism. But you cannot show how this belief works in practice.

You cannot mount any counter argument beyond "I know you have fulfilled every possible
criterion for FW, but that doesn't mean you have actually explained FW".

If there is some further X-factor, you need ot say what it is.

I am saying that what we “like” to call free will is not free will in the libertarian sense, it is simply a mixture of
determinism and indeterminability.

And steel isn't steel...

We have the illusion that we act freely simply because we do not have access to the detailed reasons underlying our decisions and
actions, and this illusion is what we call “free will”. But some of us (libertarians) believe that the illusion is not an illusion,
that we are indeed ultimately responsible for our actions.

That is a claim, not an argument.

Being a mixture of iron and carbon doesn't stop steel being steel!

Simply “being a mixture of iron and carbon” is not sufficient for “being steel”!

No, the particular nature of the combination is important AND I HAVE EXPLAINED THAT TOO!

My critics don't seem to have an alternative analysis.

The “alternative analysis” is the free will skeptic or the compatibilist analysis – both camps deny the coherency of libertarian
free will. To these camps, free will and ultimate responsibility of the libertarian kind are simply the product of illusions and
wishful thinking in the minds of libertarians. The free will skeptic or the compatibilist analysis is the only analysis which is
complete, coherent and rational.

What I meant was that your claim that I have failed to explain
what FW is because I have failed ot meet all the criteria.

You are talking as though there is some other analysis of FW into a set
of criteria, but you don't say what it is.

That has nothing to do with compatiblism or scepticism, which basically work
from the same criteria.

I can define the necessary and sufficient conditions for “steel”, and I can apply those conditions to objectively distinguish
between a sample of steel and a simple mixture of carbon and iron. If you want anyone to take your claims about the Darwinian model
seriously, you need to do the same for ultimate responsibility. Don’t just claim your model possesses ultimate responsibility, give
us some rational reasons for believing that it does.

I have done in http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_darwin.html

Again, you do not tell us how you would distinguish between genuine free will on the one hand, and a simple
indeterminable mixture of determinism and indeterminability on the other.

Rationality, the RIG, the SIS.

Again, you do not tell us how you would distinguish between genuine free will on the one hand, and a simple
Saying that it “behaves indeterminably” or that it “behaves rationally” is not enough – because (a) a simple machine can
behave both indeterminably and rationally, but it does not necessarily possesses free will,

It *does* necessarily possesses free will if it possesses all the criteria,
and the combination of CHDO and rationallity are the necessary criteria.

and (b) UR is a necessary condition of
free will – how would you go about showing that your model possesses UR?

The way I have done: by showing that UR consists of Causal
origination and Rational Self Conctolr, both of which
are supplied by the model.

Allow me to re-interpret your claim. If there are indeterministic processes operative within an entity, then those processes
may be the sources of chains of events. It does not follow simply from the presence of indeterministic processes within an entity
that the entity in question is necessarily responsible for any particular events resulting from such processes.

No: rational self-control -- the SIS -- is needed too.
[/QUOTE]

Simply “mixing together” criteria such as indeterminism, rationality and self-control does not necessarily result in an entity
with responsibility, much less ultimate responsibility.

Yes it does; they fulfil all the criteria I know of.

If you believe there is some further X-factor you need to say what it is.

This would simply make the original cause random. Are you suggesting that UR is grounded in an initial random event? How can I be
ultimately responsible for a chain of reasoning which is grounded in a random event?

Your SIS does not have to act on every impulse of the RIG.

This does not answer the question. Whether the RIG produces an impulse which the SIS acts upon or not is not under the
control of the SIS – the SIS has no choice in the matter.

The SIS does not act on every impulse of the RIG.

The RIG will either produce an impulse that the SIS acts upon
or it will not – and it will do this arbitrarily (that is what the RIG is there for). The SIS is acting deterministically,
it has no control over what it does, it is simply operating according to a deterministic algorithm, thus whether a random
event (an input to the SIS) results in an action by the SIS (an output from the SIS) depends, for any given SIS, only on
the nature/characteristics of that random event – the SIS has no “choice” in the matter. This is where your Darwinian
model falls down – the SIS is not making a choice (it is deterministic after all, it cannot do anything other than what
it is “programmed” to do),

The total system is making a choice.

and given the deterministic algorithm of the SIS the actions of the entire model depend only
upon (are determined by) the random output of the RIG. Thus I ask again – how can I be held responsible for the random
output of the RIG?

The SIS is not fixed -- it evolves gradually according to external and
internal events. Reward and punshiment are external events
that adjust the SIS. By punishing someone
for acting on the wrong impulses, you adjust their
SIS to filter out those impulses. Thus it makes
rational sense to hold possesors of a SIS responsible.[/QUOTE]
If you are going to reply that I am responsible because I am responsible for my SIS, then you fall into the infinite
regress problem of UR
[/QUOTE]

I am not going to reply that.

– if I am responsible for my SIS, then how did it come about that I am responsible for my SIS in
the first place – there must be yet another mechanism which underlies your model which creates UR for the SIS, and if
you claim it is yet another Darwinian mechanism then we are into “turtles all the way down”. The only way you can avoid
the infinite regress is by hand-waving and refusing to explain the detailed mechanism (which seems to be your current
tactic), or to appeal to supernatural forces (which neither you nor I believe in). Seems you’re stuck, doesn’t
it?

The current state of your SIS depends on the past history of internal and
external events. Internal events include the SIS/RIG interaction itslef.
You should do some research on cybernetics.
Self-control and self-modification are enabled by feedback loops,
they do not require infinite regresses.

 

[Tournesol]

The basic argument against the naturalistic attempt to explain free will and UR can be summarised as follows :

The naturalist assumes that we can construct a coherent and rational model of an agent possessing free will and UR using
“natural” building blocks. Each building block may be broken down into deterministic and/or indeterministic components.

yes.

Deterministic components are needed to provide the necessary qualities of rationality and control, whereas
indeterministic components are needed to provide (the libertarian requirement of) “alternate possibilities”.
The naturalist assumes that a suitable mixture of these deterministic and indeterministic components will provide for
not only a rational, controlling and unpredictable agent, but also (more importantly) an agent with ultimate
responsibility (UR) for its actions.

Yes. Bearing in mind that UR is just a combination of Causal Origination and Rational Self Control.

The naturalist cannot assume that UR already exists within any of the basic building blocks (components) of her
explanation (this would beg the question as to where that UR came from, leading to infinite regress), thus she must
instead assume the agent does not possesses UR for any of the individual basic building blocks, but instead that UR
somehow *emerges* from the particular way that these building blocks go together.

Yes. Bearing in mind that UR is just a combination of Causal Origination and Rational Self Control.

This is where the naturalist gets stuck, because there IS no way that she can show how UR can arise within the agent from
a judicious mix of deterministic and indeterministic components, when for each of these components in isolation the agent
does not possesses UR

That is completely irrelvant. Individual neurons do no have
the power of speach. Working in concert, they do.

The combined RIG/SIS is alleged to provide free will/UR. But clearly the SIS does not (in isolation) provide for UR – the
agent is not responsible for its SIS, the SIS is simply taken as a “given” deterministic algorithm. (If the naturalist
wants to claim the agent is responsible for his SIS, then we are into infinite regress…….).

The naturalist does not want to claim the agent is separate from the SIS.
The SIS is what the agent's responsibility consists of. You are making the separate Self assumption.

Similarly, the agent is not
responsible for his RIG, the RIG is simply taken as a “given” random number generator. (If the naturalist wants to claim
the agent is responsible for his RIG, then we are into infinite regress…….).

The agent's reponsibility consists of filtering the output of the RIG with the SIS.
You are making the separate Self assumption.

When the RIG asnd SIS are combined in the
Darwinian model, the outcome is therefore simply stochastic.

Yes. That doesn't mean it is FW. You are making the basicness assumption.

iven a particular SIS algorithm (which the agent is not
responsible for), the output of that algorithm is simply determined by the input, and the input is simply a random number
generated by the RIG. The output of the Darwinian model, therefore, is determined by a random input. Where is the “agent responsibility” in any of this?

It lies in selecting certain impulses of the RIG for action. Of course, what you mean is "where is the agent"?.

The same argument can be extended to any naturalistic combination of deterministic and indeterministic components. There
is simply no way that the naturalist can demonstrate how UR could arise, unless she assumes UR in one of the components.
The naturalist is faced with the same problem as the magician who needs to pull a rabbit out of a hat. There are two ways
to do this – either by supernatural forces, or by sleight of hand. The naturalist cannot resort to supernatural forces,
thus she must use sleight of hand – she relies on smoke and mirrors and hand-waving, hoping that nobody notices when she
slips the pre-existing rabbit into the hat.

UR isn't causa sui. It is just a set of conditions for putting the blame on the assassin, not the gun.

[/QUOTE]
Understood. But it doesn’t matter how much you camouflage or hide the detailed process with smoke and mirrors, at the end
of the day you have a mixture of random and deterministic events, which mixture you claim somehow (mystically) gives rise
to UR.
[/QUOTE]

I give an engineering solution, not a mystical one. It is you who ar being mystical in that
you think there is some X factor to FW, beyond all the stated criteria, wihtout stating what it is.

But you have not shown how this mixture gives rise to UR (ie you have not provided a rational explication which
shows the logical steps of how we proceed from a particular mixture of random and deterministic events to produce something
which we can show has UR), you simply state this as an article of faith.

No, I show how all the criteria are met.

Completely false. UR requires causal origination, self-control and rationallity. I explain all of them.
I am not claiming that you do not *explain* them, that is not the issue (hence your claim that my argument is false is a
straw man). I am claiming that you do not *show* how a particular mixture of determinism and indeterminism gives rise to
UR;

That is explaining. Explaining is showing and vice-versa.

One cannot generate UR by simply mixing together indeterminism and determinism in any old fashion, and simply hoping that
UR results. You need to show that your combination actually produces UR, which you have not done.

Yes I have.

Incorrect. What is correct is that if you fulfill the sufficient conditions for UR, you fulfill UR. But you have not
shown (and I certainly do not agree) that simply mixing together indeterminism and determinism in any particular way
provides the sufficient conditions for UR.

I have shown *how* they are combined -- by the specific mechansim of
the SIS+RIG

Indeterminism…..
rule-following rationality……
lack of external compulsion
Thus you seem to be saying that indeterminism, rule-following rationality and lack of external compulsion are necessary
conditions for UR, but I hope you are not saying that these are jointly sufficient conditions for UR?

Well, they are. The jointly sufficient conditions for UR are Causal Origination and
Rational self-Control. The first is given by indeterminism, the second by
rule-following rationality.

If you think there is some missing factor, you need to SAY WHAT IT IS!

After all, I can
program a computer with all of these things, but it does not follow that the computer will possesses UR.

If it is programmed in in such a aways ti

To summarise : You are simply assuming that your Darwinian model gives rise to UR, you have not given any rational means
by which we can establish that it does indeed possesses UR.

It posseses UR if it fulfils the criteria fro UR, and I have shown that
it does.

The main issue here is that I am claiming that you have NOT shown your Darwinian model possesses UR, you simply
assume that it does.

It posseses UR if it fulfils the criteria for UR, and I have shown that
it does.

You have not established the sufficient conditions for UR,

I have stated what I consider to be the jointly sufficient conditions
for FW. If you think something is missing you need to
SAY WHAT IT IS.

and you offer no means of testing your
model to objectively decide whether it does possesses UR or not.

It posseses UR if it fulfils the criteria for UR, and I have shown that
it does.


May I ask what do you mean exactly by “unaccountably” in this context?

Interesting. Perhaps you could elaborate on this. Are you saying there is no natural explanation, and there is also no
supernatural explanation, for the source of UR?

Indterministic events are uncaused causes.
Uncaused causes don't have causes.

If the explanation is neither natural nor supernatural, what is it? And
if you are suggesting the explanation is neither natural nor supernatural, are you suggesting that I should then accept
your explanation as a naturalistic one?

Indeterminism alone is not a sufficient condition for UR. Neither is rationality. Neither is lack of external compulsion
(whatever that means). And simply “adding them all together” also does not produce a set of jointly sufficient conditions.

Yes it does.

A computer can act indeterministically, rationally and free of external compulsion, but I would not agree that it
necessarily follows that the computer in question possesses UR.

I wouldn't say it necessarily *doesn't* follow. If you wan't me to answer questions about
some X factor that isn't on my list of criteria, you have to say what it is.

What, then, are the jointly sufficient conditions for UR?

Causal Origination and Rational Self Control.

No? Are you saying that neither (a) nor (b) is correct? Could you perhaps try to explain a little more (if you wonder
why I keep asking more questions, it’s because it seems to me that you avoid answering the earlier ones). How, exactly,
do you get from indeterminism to UR?

Only Some Entities are Credited with Volition.
His account also misses the fact that we impute volition only to certain entities. We do not say a stone is free simply because it is
not in a cage, although we might say that of a bird. Freedom is not just a negative condition of being free of constraint, it is also a
positive power which only some entities possess.
Believers in free will, libertarians, often emphasise two key features of free will: alternative possiblities (AP), the idea that there
is a genuine choice available at a given time, and Origination or ultimate responsibility (UR), the idea that there is a genuine sense in which you are the originator of your voluntary acts, and therefore bear responsibility for them.

In other words there is a choice to be made, and it is indeed you who are responsible for making it. It is famously the case that
chains of cause and effect tend to stretch forwards and backwards indefinitely. Yet our accepted practices tend to place the moral
responsibility only at certain points. We blame the assassin, not the gun or the bullet (or the Big Bang). If there is to be rational
justification for our moral proactices, there must be a rational basis for placing the blame on persons.

UR has two main components. (1) a Casual Originative Power, the ability to do something that is not the inevitable outcome of external influences, and (2) rational self-control: we do not attribute moral responsibility to entities that lack rational self control even if they can "do the unexpected" -- that includes mentally troubled humans as well as unstable isotopes!

Ideally, UR should have an objective explanation (rather than a conventional one, like deeming certain pieces of paper to be "money"). For naturalists, it should have ane explanation grounded in physics. The hypothesis of indeterminism can fulfil the role of an explanation of Causal Originative Power aspect of UR as well as being the obvious explanation for AP.

An indeterministic cause is an event which is not itself the effect of a prior cause. Thus, if you trace a cause-effect chain
backwards it will come to a halt at an indetermistic cause; the indeterministic cause stands at the "head" of a cause-effect chain.
Thus, such causes can pin down the UR, the originative power, of agents.

There are two important things to realize at this point:

Firstly, I am not saying that indeterministic causes correspond one-to-one to human decisions or actions. It takes billions of basic
physical events to produce an action or decision. The claim that indeterminism is part of this complex process does not mean that
individual decisions are "just random". (As we expand here). We will go onto propose that there are other mechansims which filter out random impulses, so that there is rational self-control as well as casual originative power, and thus both criteria for UR are met.

Secondly, I am also not saying that indeterminism by itself is a fully sufficient criterion for agenthood. If physical indeterminism
is widespread (as argued here), that would attribute free will to all sorts of unlikely agents, such as decaying atoms. Our theory
requires some additional criteria. There is no reason why these should not be largely the same criteria used by compatibilists and
supercompatibilists -- rule-following rationallity, lack of external compulsion, etc. Where their criteria do not go far enough, we
can supplement them with UR and AP. Where their criteria attribute free will too widely to entities, our supplementary criteria will
narrow the domain.

It still seems to me that you have not in fact shown that your Darwinian model possesses UR – you simply assume it does
because you have mixed indeterminism and determinism and produced something which can operate rationally but
unpredictably.

That **is** showing it has UR. Those ***are*** the criteria.

No, it is not. Your “criteria” are not sufficient conditions for UR

How do you know ?

 

[Tournesol]

(as I said, I can program a computer with those criteria,
but it does not follow that a computer with such criteria will possesses UR).

It doesn't follow that it doesn't.

I do not accept that sufficiently advanced computers cannot have FW. How can you be sure they
don't ? If you are appealing to some futher X-factor, then you
need to state what it is.

What you need to do is to establish the
sufficient conditions for UR, and then to show that your model meets those conditions. This you have not done.

I have done both.

If your thesis is that the Darwinian model possesses UR, then I suggest that my iRIG/dRIG example under the heading The Problem
with Indeterminism in post #3 of this thread falsifies your thesis.

I have answered that objection:

Real Randomness and Pseudo-randomness: The difference
A pseudo-random numbers is a mechansim (usally an algorithm) that spits out numbers deterministically. They are deemed to be
pseudo-random so long as they are reasonably unpredictable and evenly distributed. Detecting a pseudo-random number generator
as such depends on how much of its output you have in relation to how complex it is. (wikipedia article)
Real Randomness and Pseudo-randomness: objectivity
Some people claim it is impossible in principle to empirically detect the difference between real, intrinsic randomness and
pseudo-randomness. Whilst initially plausible, this is in fact doubtful as sophisticated procedures like the Aspect experiment show.
Even if it is true, the main thrust of the argument is that a free will is possible if indeterminism is possible, not that
indeterminism-based free will is actually true. The possibillity of indeterminism-based free will is thus established even if
the truth of indeterminsim based free-will is epistemically inaccessible. "it is not necessarily true" is no rebuttal to "it is
possible".

Real Randomness and Pseudo-randomness: subjectivity
A variation on that argument has it that substituting pseudo-randomness for real randomness in the brain would make no subjectively
detectable difference. It is difficult to see how anyone could be sure at the time of writing. There is considerable disagreement
about how and to what extent subjective consciousnes relates to the physical. Whether a physical system is random or deterministic
has a physical basis -- it is part of the total physical situation. Physicalism requires only that consciousness supervenes on
the physical, not that it supervenes on any particular aspect of the physical, so it is physicalistically allowable for the
difference between real- and pseudo-randomness to be subjectively detectable. As ever, it should be born in mind that the
claim "naturalistic libertarian free will is possibly true" is not contradicted by scenarios that claim naturalistic libertarian
free will is possibly false", only be the claim that it is actually false.

Real Randomness and Pseudo-randomness: necessity
Yet another variation on the same objection has it that real randomness is not actually necessary to solve the "engineering" problem -- that pseudo-randomness would have been just as good. As stated that is true, buit it is not very relevant. Nature might have evolved a pseudo-random-number generator in the brain, but that doesn't mean She did. It might have been "easier" to take afvantage of the thermal noise present in all systems. In any case, the usual response applies. The modality is wrong. To say that our thesis might not have been true does not mean it is actually false. And in any case, it is only a claim to the effect that something is possible.

Please could you explain how the Aspect experiment allows us to distinguish between intrinsic randomness and pseudo-randomness?

It establishes the non-existence of one class of hidden variables, local hidden
variables. A "hidden variable" approach to QM is basically a claim that it is pseudo random.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tournesol
Even if it is true, the main thrust of the argument is that a free will is possible if determinism is possible, not that
indeterminism-based free will is actually true. The possibillity of indeterminism-based free will is thus established even if the
truth of indeterminsim based free-will is epistemically inaccessible. "it is not necessarily true" is no rebuttal to "it is possible".

Oh really, Tournesol, now you are employing the supernaturalistic tactic of “I cannot show that my explanation actually works, or that
it is even coherent, in practice, but you also cannot prove that I am wrong, therefore there is a possibility I might be right”.

As stated it is perfetly valid. How else does one argue for a possibility ?

That’s a desperate and naïve move which does not lend any credibility at all to your thesis. Such a move is the last resort of the
person who has run out of rational argument – “you can’t prove me wrong, therefore I may be right, therefore I am justified in my belief” – this tactic can be used to “justify” a belief in absolutely anything which is even remotely logically possible (eg solipsism). If you wish to resort to this tactic then there is no point in continuing with rational discussion, because it simply comes down to “I believe it – so there”.

The claim "it is possible therefore it is true" is invalid. However, I am not making that claim.
You are ignoring important details.

If free will entails UR, then I claim (as per post #3) that you have NOT shown that UR entails indeterminism. All you can show
(I believe) is the following :

EITHER (a) both models possesses UR, OR (b) neither model possesses UR, OR (c) UR is epiphenomenal.

The fact that something is indetectable does not mean it doesn't exist.
If FW depends on indeterminism, and indeterminism is an indetectable fact, then FW
is an indetectable fact. There are indetectable facts, such as how many
children Lady macbeth had. You argument is based on a false inference.

And I am *not* conceding that indeterminism *is* indetectable.

It *might* be indetectable. In that case, the substantiveness of my
claim depends on the detectability of indeterminism. But the claim
anyway explicitly depends ont the existence of indeterminism. The
claim that X is possible generally depends on other possibilities.
It is no objection to a possibility claim to point that out.

As with so many of your other obejctions, it would make
sense if I were claiming FW necessarily exists.

A variation on that argument has it that substituting pseudo-randomness for real randomness in the brain would make no subjectively
detectable difference. It is difficult to see how anyone could be sure at the time of writing.

At the end of the day, we cannot be “certain” of anything. To follow your latest “defence” of your thesis to its logical conclusion,
I cannot be sure that solipsism is false, and I cannot be sure that the supernaturalists are wrong (I have no way of proving it).

That is a straw-man. I was not talking about solipsism, I was talking the question of how consciousness
supervenes on the physical.

But
I certainly do not believe solipsism is true, and I do not accept as true the supernaturalist explanation for free will (and neither
do you), simply because I cannot prove them false.

The question is what is possibe.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tournesol
As ever, it should be born in mind that the claim "naturalistic libertarian free will is possibly true" is not contradicted by
scenarios the claim naturalistic libertarian free will is possibly false", only be the claim that it is actually false.
Santa Claus, Tooth Fairies, Leprechauns, Tokoloshes, etc etc are also all possibly true – but I don’t believe in them either.

You shouldn't because there is no prima-facie evidence. There is prima facie
evidence of FW, as I explain at the beginning of http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_darwin.html

Your claim up to now was NOT that UR is “possibly true”, it is the stronger claim that the Darwinian model is a mechanism which
can actually create free will (and hence UR). But you have not demonstrated, by any rational or objective argument, that your
model actually creates UR, you simply believe that it does, in the same way that my baby daughter once believed in the Tooth
Fairy. Forgive me if I don’t share your faith.

The model fulfils my criteria for UR. If you have other criteria, you need to say what they are.

The Aspect experiment test for local hidden variables.

But it did not rule out non-local hidden variables.

I did not claim it provide final proof of phsyical indeterminism. It *does* show
that physical indeteminism can be investigated. Bell's Theorem was
quite unexpected when it was first published. Something equally unexpected might
be published tomorrow.

QM may indeed be pseudo-random – we just don’t know for sure (and nor will we
ever know for sure – because the HUP places a limit on our epistemic horizon, and there IS no way to prove that an event is genuinely
and ontically, as opposed to epistemically, random).

Whether the HUP itself is epistemic or ontic is open to question.

 

[moving finger]

Hi Tournesol

Apologies for delay in reply - been on vacation for 2 weeks.

(as I said, I can program a computer with those criteria, but it does not follow that a computer with such criteria will possesses UR).

It doesn't follow that it doesn't.

The only rational way to correctly conclude that an agent possesses UR is (a) to agree the necessary & sufficient conditions for UR and (b) to demonstrate that the agent meets those conditions. In absence of such a demonstration, it would simply be a matter of faith (not of science, and also not of philosophy) whether an agent possesses UR or not.

I do not accept that sufficiently advanced computers cannot have FW. How can you be sure they don't ? If you are appealing to some futher X-factor, then you need to state what it is.

FW entails UR. If you wish to claim that an agent possesses FW by virtue of possessing UR, the onus is on you to show how (ie in what way) we can distinguish between an agent which possesses UR, and an agent which does not. Otherwise we are simply left with “the agent possesses UR simply because I claim it does”. My argument is that UR is a (naturally) incoherent concept (it entails infinite regress) – the only route to UR is via supernaturalism.

See : http://www.geocities.com/alex_b_christie/Routes.pdf

What you need to do is to establish the sufficient conditions for UR, and then to show that your model meets those conditions. This you have not done.

I have done both.

You have not, as far as I can see, established the necessary & sufficient conditions for UR and shown that your model can satisfy these conditions. If you think you have done this, could you please point out exactly where?

Some people claim it is impossible in principle to empirically detect the difference between real, intrinsic randomness and pseudo-randomness. Whilst initially plausible, this is in fact doubtful as sophisticated procedures like the Aspect experiment show.

The Aspect experiment shows nothing of the sort. Could you explain why you think it does?

The possibillity of indeterminism-based free will is thus established

The possibility of indeterminism-based free will has not been established. Indeterminism leads simply to…… indeterminsim. You have not demonstrated how this equates with free will (since free will entails UR, and you have not shown how indeterminism gives rise to UR).

Please could you explain how the Aspect experiment allows us to distinguish between intrinsic randomness and pseudo-randomness?

It establishes the non-existence of one class of hidden variables, local hidden variables. A "hidden variable" approach to QM is basically a claim that it is pseudo random.

It does not establish the non-existence of non-local hidden variables. Thus it does not establish the non-existence of pseudo-randomness. The world could indeed be (non-locally) pseudo-random, and we have no way of knowing that it is not – the Aspect experiment does not rule out pseudo-randomness.

If FW depends on indeterminism, and indeterminism is an indetectable fact, then FW is an indetectable fact.

How do you know that FW depends on indeterminism if both FW and indeterminism are both indetectable facts? Your premise that FW depends on indeterminism is simply that – a premise. It’s like claiming :

Premise : pink fairies depend on Santa Claus
Premise : Santa Claus is an indetectable fact
Conclusion : pink fairies are indetectable facts

Which is a totally useless argument (it can be applied to derive any conclusion we wish), since neither the premises nor the conclusion can be in any way validated.

There are indetectable facts, such as how many children Lady macbeth had.

Do you mean the historical Lady Macbeth, or the Shakespearean character? Why would you believe the number of children borne by the historical Lady Macbeth is an indetectable fact? That the number of children borne by a fictional character (Shakespeare's portrayal of the Macbeth's is factually inaccurate) is indetectable is a function of the fact that the number is ontically indeterminate, it is not an indetectable "fact" - it is a "non-fact" which is therefore not quantifiable by definition.

Interesting that you should bring up the subject of Macbeth's descendants. I am of the Farquharson clan, which emerged as a clan from Macbeth's G G G G grandson Archibald Finley in 1236. The Finley clan had been outlawed by the English after Macbeth's death at the hands of Duncan's son (assisted by those damned English).

Santa Claus, Tooth Fairies, Leprechauns, Tokoloshes, etc etc are also all possibly true – but I don’t believe in them either.

You shouldn't because there is no prima-facie evidence. There is prima facie evidence of FW

There is plenty of prima facie “evidence” for these and other supernatural phenomena if you look for it, and interpret the evidence the way you want to. I could claim your alleged “prima facie evidence of free will” is in fact only evidence that some people believe they have free will, and not evidence that free will actually exists.

Bell's Theorem was quite unexpected when it was first published. Something equally unexpected might be published tomorrow.

Yes. And pigs might fly. As a physicist I recently read remarked :

Be open-minded : But not so much that your brain falls out

(Jim Al-Khalili)

Whether the HUP itself is epistemic or ontic is open to question.

That’s exactly what I’ve been saying – there is no way we can know for sure. Whether one believes the world is intrinsically deterministic or indeterministic is a matter of faith, not science. But this question is irrelevant in this context, because no matter what one believes about indeterminism, there is no coherent naturalistic mechanism (either deterministic or indeterministic) which gives rise to UR, hence to free will.

Best Regards

 

[selfAdjoint]

FW entails UR. If you wish to claim that an agent possesses FW by virtue of possessing UR, the onus is on you to show how (ie in what way) we can distinguish between an agent which possesses UR, and an agent which does not. Otherwise we are simply left with “the agent possesses UR simply because I claim it does”. My argument is that UR is a (naturally) incoherent concept (it entails infinite regress) – the only route to UR is via supernaturalism

I agree with you. The strong "libertarian" definition of free will is unverifiable, and therefore a matter of faith. what do we conclude from that?

 

[moving finger]

I agree with you. The strong "libertarian" definition of free will is unverifiable, and therefore a matter of faith. what do we conclude from that?

I would go further and say that the notion of libertarian free will is not only unverifiable - it is (naturalistically) incoherent (ie there is no way that we can explain or model such a form of free will using a naturalistic approach - the only way to derive such a free will is via appeal to supernaturalism).

The (so-called Darwinian) model proposed by Tournesol provides for rational unpredictability in behaviour, but (and this part Tournesol does not seem to accept) libertarian free will is not simply equated with "rational unpredictability" - it also requires ultimate responsibility as a necessary condition. And ultimate responsibility entails infinite regress - it is not something that any naturalistic model or explanation can possibly achieve. Tournesol seems to hold fast to the hope that maybe someone, somewhere, someday, can come up with a naturalistic mechanistic explanation of how we can overcome the obstacle of infinite regress - of how free will can pull itself up by its own hair from the swamp of nothingness (as Nietzsche graphically put it). As I said, it's also possible that pigs can fly (and I'd prefer to bet on flying pigs).

Best Regards

 

[selfAdjoint]

Tournesol seems to hold fast to the hope that maybe someone, somewhere, someday, can come up with a naturalistic mechanistic explanation of how we can overcome the obstacle of infinite regress - of how free will can pull itself up by its own hair from the swamp of nothingness (as Nietzsche graphically put it). As I said, it's also possible that pigs can fly (and I'd prefer to bet on flying pigs).

Well I wouldn't deny that hope; you haven't firmly SHOWN that UR is incoherent, and so denying would just be "atheism of the gaps"; claiming to refute a position based on a contingent deficit in theory.