Quantum Mechanics and Determinism?

[moving finger]

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.

Of course - hope springs eternal as they say - and there is no law of the universe which says humans cannot believe in hopeless causes. In the final analysis one is left only with premises. I cannot prove that a mechanism which does not exist is an impossible mechanism, all I can do is to show that there is no naturalistic way such a mechanism can work - because to work it would need to pull itself up by its own non-existent bootstraps. There may be some supernatural way such a thing is possible, I cannot prove there is not.

I cannot prove solipsism is false. I cannot prove that ultimate responsibility does not arise from some supernatural means. I also can't firmly show that Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, tokoloshes and leprechauns don't exist (partly because one cannot prove supernatural events are impossible). I simply choose to use premises which do not require such supernatural explanations as part of my understanding of the world. And the premise of free will is an unnecessary premise in my philosophy.

Best Regards

 

[Tournesol]

MF

it also requires ultimate responsibility as a necessary condition. And ultimate responsibility entails infinite regress

Given your definition of freedom as being freedom from all
outside inlfuences. However, I am operating on the
definition. However , I define FW as
"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".

So the "infinite regress" objection is essentially a straw man.

 

[moving finger]

Hi Tournesol

I define FW as "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".

So the "infinite regress" objection is essentially a straw man.

Are you saying that your version of free will does not entail ultimate responsibility?

If so, this sounds more like the compatibilist version of "free will" (which is compatible with determinism) rather than libertarian free will.

Best Regards

 

[Tournesol]

Hi Tournesol
Are you saying that your version of free will does not entail ultimate responsibility?

No, I am saying it doens't entail an infinite regress

If so, this sounds more like the compatibilist version of "free will"

Of course not, I explicitly argue against compatiblism.

 

[moving finger]

Hi Tournesol

No, I am saying it doens't entail an infinite regress

UR does indeed entail infinite regress, as shown here :

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

UR is not a "pre-existing property" of mass/energy - except perhaps in some extremist supernatural theories which might posit UR as a fundamental property inherent in matter, in the same way that Princeton physicists have laughably suggested that "free will", if it exists at all, must also exist at the quantum level (ie if humans have free will then so too do fundamental particles).

Unless you wish to suggest that UR is a property inherent in matter, then (if UR exists at all in some agents), it must emerge or be created via some process within the agent. There is no naturalistic process whereby UR can be created, hence our only way of getting UR is either via infinite regress, or via some unknown supernatural process (as explained in the link above).

Could you show how the infinite regress implicit in UR can be avoided? In other words, could you show how UR is created within an agent? To do this, you will need to (i) establish the necessary & sufficient conditions for UR, then (ii) show that the agent satisfies these conditions.

If we cannot show either (a) that UR exists within an agent, or (b) propose some credible hypothesis as to how UR might be created within an agent, then any belief in the existence of UR is an issue of faith, not of science or philosophy.

On a separate but related point, could you explain how your definition of FW differs from the "free will skeptic" position? A free will skeptic (such as myself) would say that the fact that an agent can rationally choose and consciously perform certain actions (ie act deterministically), some of which are not necessarily brought about inevitably by external circumstances (ie some of them may have indeterministic causes), is completely compatible with a simple mixture of determinism and indeterminsim, can be easily modeled by a simple machine, but does not satisfy the necessary conditions for libertarian free will by virtue of the fact that it is silent on the issue of UR.

Best Regards

 

[Tournesol]

Unless you wish to suggest that UR is a property inherent in matter, then (if UR exists at all in some agents), it must emerge or be created via some process within the agent. There is no naturalistic process whereby UR can be created, hence our only way of getting UR is either via infinite regress, or via some unknown supernatural process (as explained in the link above).

An agent is responsible if the have control over their actions. They don't
have to have contol over their control (ad infinitum). Your argument is like
saying you don't know something unless you know that you know it,and
know that you know that you know it, ad infinitum. It is just an
entirely artifical problem. Nothing *requires* such a regress.

Yo just need to know. And you just need self-control.

To look at it another way, if no-one has UR, then no-one is morally
responsible. Is that something you really believe ?

Could you show how the infinite regress implicit in UR can be avoided?

What infinite regress ?

It isn't implicit, any more than knowing-that-you-know is implicit
in knowing.

The conscious rational state I am in today needs to be connected with
the states i was in yesterday and tommorow, but it odens't need 100% connection. I don't need to have full conscious, rational control from the moment I was born. It can "fade in". As of course it does, developmentally. You might say that without 1005 ratioanl self control
at all times, I don't have 100% moral responsibility. Well, perhaps
I don't. Perhaps no-one does. The tendency to
think in terms of absolutes is part of the old, supernatural way
of thinking.

In other words, could you show how UR is created within an agent?

Minimally, an agent has UR if there are objective
grounds for subjecting that agent to praise and blame
in order to modify their behaviour. We balme the assassin,
not the gun. You speak about UR as though it is some
mystical force.

To do this, you will need to (i) establish the necessary & sufficient conditions for UR, then (ii) show that the agent satisfies these conditions.

Which I have:-

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.

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.

Likewise, 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.

If we cannot show either (a) that UR exists within an agent, or (b) propose some credible hypothesis as to how UR might be created within an agent, then any belief in the existence of UR is an issue of faith, not of science or philosophy.

"If".

On a separate but related point, could you explain how your definition of FW differs from the "free will skeptic" position? A free will skeptic (such as myself) would say that the fact that an agent can rationally choose and consciously perform certain actions (ie act deterministically), some of which are not necessarily brought about inevitably by external circumstances (ie some of them may have indeterministic causes), is completely compatible with a simple mixture of determinism and indeterminsim, can be easily modeled by a simple machine, but does not satisfy the necessary conditions for libertarian free will by virtue of the fact that it is silent on the issue of UR.

Says who? If you do something of your free will , it is your responsibility --
that is practically a tautology. The point of interest is that
indeteminism provides both the Elbow Room necessary
for freedom and the causal origination necessary for UR, for
the buck to stop with agents. (And, no, it isn't
"just randomness" because of the SIS).

You seem to be defining UR in some way different from myself, Dennett,
kane, etc.

"to be ultimately responsible
for an action, the agent must be responsible for anything that is a sufficient reason (condition, cause or motive) for the action’s occurring. If, for example, a choice issues from, and can be sufficiently explained by, an agent’s character and motives (together with background conditions), then to be ultimately responsible for the choice, the agent must be at least in part responsible by virtue of past voluntary choices or actions for having the character and motives he or she now has (Kane(a) p 130)."

"According to Kane, in order for us to be responsible for our actions, we must be at least partly responsible for the sufficient causes that move us to action."

http://www.morris.umn.edu/academic/philosophy/hallthesis.html

 

[Tournesol]

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.

So? I have given the N&S conditions, and since my theory is naturalistic, it is all testable in theory.

Originally Posted by Tournesol
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.

You deny that elsewhere...

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 have answered the regress issue elsewhere. If libertarianism is false, agents will still
possess responsibility in a limited (semicompatilbist) sense. Libertariansim provides
a fuller picture, which support the idea that we do indeed produce or generate our
actions in some sense, rather than beign yet another link inthe chain
of C&E.

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?

here:-

"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."

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?

Pseudo-randomness means hiden variables. The Aspect experiment rules out one class of HV theories.

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).

yes I have:-

"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".

"Likewise, 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".

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

By ruling out one class of hidden variables.
In conjunction with a good reason to rule out non-locality, it would form
a complete reason to reject determinism. we already have fairly
good reaosn, in that relativity is local, and non-locla HV theories
like Bohm's are difficult to relativis, which is why
they are rejected by most physicists.

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.

You do not know whether or no we have a way of knowing establishing randomenss over pseudo
randomenss. Bell's paper, on which the Aspect Expereiemtn ws based, came as a surprise
to the physics community. As I have explained, an good reason to reject non-locality
will seal the deal. You do no know whether or not such an expereiment will be
performed or how. It is you who are engaging in wishful thinking.

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?

GOFCA. Good Old Fashioned Conceptual Analysis. Physicsts know that gravitons have
spin 2, even thogh one jhas never been detected. How do you think they do that?

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.

It's a hypotehtical arguemnt. Everythign is a hypothesis until it is put into pratice, e.g
"if we build a big enough rocket, we can fly to the moon".

(None of this, BTW, is related to the claim that FW is incoherent. Undetecability is not
incoherence. Not that I am in any way conceding the undetecability point).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?

Can you detect it?

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).

So can you detect it? If you have inside information, the philosophy community had better
find another stock example of an indectable fact.

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

And Higgs bosons, and extraterrestrial life, and a cure for cancer...

But at least you have conceded that FW is possibly true...

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.

if you interpret it, it isn't prima facie.

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.

I dae say you would.
A solipsist would say that sensory evidecne is only evidence that people
mistakenly believe in an exteranl world... PF evidence must be treated as true by until proven
false.

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 :

So nobody is ever going to make a startling discovery again, ever, ever ,ever.
That is a pretty startling discovery, Dr Christie. Or is it just an opinion ?

Be open-minded : But not so much that your brain falls out
(Jim Al-Khalili)

You seem to have run out of arguments.

That’s exactly what I’ve been saying – there is no way we can know for sure.

Then we cannot knwo whether randomenss is provable or not.

Whether one believes the world is intrinsically deterministic or indeterministic is a matter of faith, not science.

Unless is is proveable. Which you don't know, one way or the other.

But this question is irrelevant in this context, because no matter what one believes about indeterminism, there is no coherent naturalistic mechanism

Incoherent means self-contradictory. You have not shown a contradiction in my theory. You are
just saying that you don't like it, you are not going to believe it, it goes against your opinions,
etc.

 

[moving finger]

Hi Tournesol

An agent is responsible if the have control over their actions. They don't have to have contol over their control (ad infinitum).

If we wish to claim that the agent has ultimate control over its actions, then yes they do have to have control over their control. (If someone else is in "control of my control", then in an ultimate sense I am not in fact in control of my actions therefore cannot claim to be in ultimate control)Taking your claim literally, then a simple thermostat is responsible by virtue of the fact that it controls the temperature of a room. In the “responsible simpliciter” sense this is of course quite correct, a thermostat is indeed responsible for controlling the temperature of a room. But it does not possesses ultimate responsibility, precisely because it does not have “control over its control” (ad infinitum).

Your argument makes the same mistake as the confusion between “responsibility simpliciter” and “ultimate responsibility”. An inanimate machine can be responsible for an action, but that does not mean it possesses ultimate responsibility. A thermostat controls the temperature of a room, but that does not mean that it is in ultimate control (because the control it exerts is determined by a pre-existing design and programme which are not under the thermostat's control).

To look at it another way, if no-one has UR, then no-one is morally responsible. Is that something you really believe ?

First define moral responsibility. If you mean “ultimate moral responsibility” then the concept is incoherent (hence no-one possesses ultimate moral responsibility – and yes, I do believe this). But moral responsibility without the “ultimate” qualification, like responsibility simpliciter, is quite coherent and does exist.

Could you show how the infinite regress implicit in UR can be avoided?

What infinite regress ?

Read the paper that you pasted the link to in your last post :

http://www.morris.umn.edu/academic/philosophy/hallthesis.html

This paper clearly explains the nature of the infinite regress.

If I am to be ultimately responsible for my state N, then it follows that I must also be ultimately responsible for my state N-1, the causally antecedent state to N. But then I must also be ultimately responsible for my state N-2, the causally antecedent state to N-1, and so on ad infinituum. To avoid this regress you need to explain how it can come about that I can be held ultimately responsible for my state N in the case where I am NOT ultimately responsible for the causally antecedent state N-1. Suggesting that state N is not fully causally determined and has some indeterministic component does not generate ultimate responsibility.

(and suggesting that I need only be "partially ultimately responsible" rather than fully responsible for an action, whatever partial responsibility might mean, makes no difference to the injfinite regress argument, as shown towards the end of this post - you cannot generate "partial UR" from "zero UR" any more easily than you can generate "full UR" from "zero UR")

The conscious rational state I am in today needs to be connected with the states i was in yesterday and tommorow, but it odens't need 100% connection. I don't need to have full conscious, rational control from the moment I was born. It can "fade in". As of course it does, developmentally.

How does it “fade in”? By what process can a system which is not ultimately responsible for its actions at one moment in time then become ultimately responsible at a later moment in time? How can it come about that I can be held ultimately responsible for my state N if I am NOT ultimately responsible for the causally antecedent state N-1? I agree conscious responsibility simpliciter “fades in” as conscious control fades in – but again we must not confuse responsibility simpliciter with ultimate responsibility.

In other words, could you show how UR is created within an agent?

Minimally, an agent has UR if there are objective grounds for subjecting that agent to praise and blame in order to modify their behaviour.

Sorry, Tournesol, but this does not show “how UR is created within an agent” – it simply describes how we arbitrarily assign responsibility simpliciter to agents, and how (some of us) assume that this responsibility is also somehow “ultimate responsibility”. You have not shown how (ie in what way) UR is created, or how (ie in what way) we can detect such UR (as opposed to simply assuming that it exists). An agent does not need to possesses UR in order to be responsible simpliciter for an action, and it does not need to possesses UR in order to modify its behaviour following praise or blame for its actions. It can also be 100% deterministic and we could still subject it to praise and blame in order to modify its behaviour (but then, even though it still meets with your description above, I guess you would NOT claim that it possesses UR).

Thus I ask again, could you show how UR is created within an agent?

You speak about UR as though it is some mystical force.

Indeed it is – UR is an incoherent notion therefore can arise only via supernatural means – isn’t that what a mystical force is?

To do this, you will need to (i) establish the necessary & sufficient conditions for UR, then (ii) show that the agent satisfies these conditions.

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.

Are you suggesting that these conditions are necessary & sufficient (N&S) for UR? In other words, any agent which meets these conditions therefore possesses UR? I could in principle build a fancy thermostat which possesses “rational self-control”, with an added internal random number generator implanted to ensure that at least some of the thermostat’s behaviour is not “the inevitable outcome of external influences”. Such a machine would meet your above N&S conditions - does it follow that it possesses UR?

If we cannot show either (a) that UR exists within an agent, or (b) propose some credible hypothesis as to how UR might be created within an agent, then any belief in the existence of UR is an issue of faith, not of science or philosophy.

"If".

As explained above, you have not shown that UR exists or is created within any agent (when I asked you to show how UR is created within an agent, you simply described an assumption). When I asked for the necessary & sufficient conditions for UR, your reply implies that a suitably modified thermostat would possesses UR. Your argument is based simply on an assumption that UR exists, with inadequate coherent evidential justification or rational support. That’s why I call it an issue of faith. That’s why the “If” – because you have not shown that belief in the existence UR is anything more than faith.

On a separate but related point, could you explain how your definition of FW differs from the "free will skeptic" position? A free will skeptic (such as myself) would say that the fact that an agent can rationally choose and consciously perform certain actions (ie act deterministically), some of which are not necessarily brought about inevitably by external circumstances (ie some of them may have indeterministic causes), is completely compatible with a simple mixture of determinism and indeterminsim, can be easily modeled by a simple machine, but does not satisfy the necessary conditions for libertarian free will by virtue of the fact that it is silent on the issue of UR.

Says who?

Says me. Your definition of free will is :

"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 agent does not need to possesses UR in order to act with free will according to the above definition. It only needs to choose rationally and to consciously perform actions (which action can be purely deterministic and does not entail UR), and have some internal indeterministic component (which also does not entail UR) which ensures that not all of its actions are brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances. Where does UR come into it at all? In other words, your definition of free will does not require, it does not entail, UR. And without UR, your definition is not a form of free will that would be acceptable to a libertarian.

You seem to be defining UR in some way different from myself, Dennett, kane, etc.

Not at all. My argument works for UR as defined by Kane, as shown below.

"According to Kane, in order for us to be responsible for our actions, we must be at least partly responsible for the sufficient causes that move us to action."

(here we assume that in the above "responsible" means "ultimately responsible")

And what about the causes of those causes?
Adding the qualification “at least partly” doesn’t change the argument.

If I am not (at least partly) UR for the state N-1 which is the sufficient cause of state N, then how can I possibly be (at least partly) UR for state N? (Kane agrees that I cannot).

But if I am to be (at least partly) UR for the state N-1, then I must also in turn be (at least partly) UR for the sufficient causal state N-2… and so on.

How do you avoid the infinite regress of (partial) UR? To do this, you will need to show how you can generate partial UR from a starting state of zero UR…….. can you? If you cannot show how it is done, your belief in UR is an article of faith and not of philosophy or science (which unfortunately then puts you in the supernaturalistic camp).

By the way, thank you very much for the link at http://www.morris.umn.edu/academic/philosophy/hallthesis.html

This paper clearly agrees that UR does indeed lead to infinite regress - perhaps you should read it yourself? This is one of the main conclusions of the paper :

Kane’s own theory of freedom does not seem to meet the UR condition. His notion of Self-Forming Actions seems to be inherently flawed. Kane tries to use SFAs to evade the problem of regression concerning the origins of our act. However, Kane’s theory does not overcome the regress problem. Kane’s theory does not give and adequate account of how agents can gain responsibility-grounding control.

I am simply claiming the same for your "theory".

Incoherent means self-contradictory.

Not at all.

Incoherent means “it doesn’t hang together and make clear, rational sense”. Someone who is incoherent is someone who is unable to think or express their thoughts in a clear or orderly manner.

A self-contradictory statement might be called incoherent (but this is arguable), but incoherent statements are not necessarily self-contradictory.

Best Regards

 

[moving finger]

Whether one believes the world is intrinsically deterministic or indeterministic is a matter of faith, not science.

Unless is is proveable. Which you don't know, one way or the other.

But I do know – it follows quite naturally from the HUP.

Can we prove the world is or is not completely deterministic? No, the HUP shows that this is impossible (ie there are limits to our knowledge of the world, thus there may be some deterministic relationships, such as hidden variables, which are in principle undetectable).

Can we prove the world is or is not at least partly indeterministic? No, again the HUP shows that this is impossible. Any indeterminism we think we observe may simply be a result of epistemic indeterminability (as opposed to ontic indeterminism), as a consequence of the limitations in our knowledge of the world.

Conclusion : Neither determinism nor indeterminism can be proven either true or false.

Best Regards

 

[selfAdjoint]

Any indeterminism we think we observe may simply be a result of epistemic indeterminability (as opposed to ontic indeterminism), as a consequence of the limitations in our knowledge of the world.

Finger, if we hypothesize that quantum uncertainty is epistemic, then this is just a technological, contigent limitation. Look what happened to the similar "diffraction limitation" in optics.

 

[moving finger]

Finger, if we hypothesize that quantum uncertainty is epistemic, then this is just a technological, contigent limitation. Look what happened to the similar "diffraction limitation" in optics.

is it? surely not if it's limited by the HUP - if the HUP is a genuine fundamental principle then I don't see how it can be circumvented?

Unless Afshar is correct of course, and complementarity is not all it's cracked up to be?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afshar_experiment

But I'm not a physicist - could you briefly describe the diffraction limitation issue, and why it's not a limitation after all? Or point me to a website so I can educate myself?

Best Regards

 

[selfAdjoint]

is it? surely not if it's limited by the HUP - if the HUP is a genuine fundamental principle then I don't see how it can be circumvented?

Unless Afshar is correct of course, and complementarity is not all it's cracked up to be?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afshar_experiment

But I'm not a physicist - could you briefly describe the diffraction limitation issue, and why it's not a limitation after all? Or point me to a website so I can educate myself?

Best Regards

Diffraction limitation is an old rule from optics, based on a wave theory of light, which is correct for this purpose, that says that with light of a given frequency, and therefore fixed wave length, you can't "resolve" (i.e. see clearly) objects shorter than the wave length (there's a factor in there I'm ignoring). Microscopists were driven by this to use shorter and shorter wavelengths, culminating in the celebrated electron diffraction microscope which uses the Compton wavelength of electrons. But in recent years clever work with "nonlinear media" has demonstrated powerful violations of diffraction limitation.

My point was that if you assume the UP is epistemic, i.e "We can't observe the particle perfectly because our observation disturbs it", this ignores the possibility that we could, perhaps using entanglement as Einstein, Posolski, and Rosen suggested, observe it without disturbing it. Althhough Heisenberg motivated his concept using epistemic considerations he actually derived it using the Fourier transform relationship of the momentum and position wavefunctions from quantum theory.

 

[moving finger]

Diffraction limitation is an old rule from optics, based on a wave theory of light, which is correct for this purpose, that says that with light of a given frequency, and therefore fixed wave length, you can't "resolve" (i.e. see clearly) objects shorter than the wave length (there's a factor in there I'm ignoring). Microscopists were driven by this to use shorter and shorter wavelengths, culminating in the celebrated electron diffraction microscope which uses the Compton wavelength of electrons. But in recent years clever work with "nonlinear media" has demonstrated powerful violations of diffraction limitation.

thanks selfAdjoint - that's interesting , I will investigate more! It's always good to learn new stuff.

My point was that if you assume the UP is epistemic, i.e "We can't observe the particle perfectly because our observation disturbs it", this ignores the possibility that we could, perhaps using entanglement as Einstein, Posolski, and Rosen suggested, observe it without disturbing it. Althhough Heisenberg motivated his concept using epistemic considerations he actually derived it using the Fourier transform relationship of the momentum and position wavefunctions from quantum theory.

Ahhh, I see what you mean about epistemic now. I did not mean epistemic in the practical measurement sense "the observation disturbs the system being observed", I meant epistemic in the in-principle measurement sense "it is in principle impossible to simultaneously know both the position and momentum of a quantum object, becasue these properties are complementary properties". I'm not very good at QM, but my understanding is that this somehow arises from the QM formalism being in Hilbert space, whereas position and momentum measurements are done in "real" space?

Best Regards

 

[selfAdjoint]

Ahhh, I see what you mean about epistemic now. I did not mean epistemic in the practical measurement sense "the observation disturbs the system being observed", I meant epistemic in the in-principle measurement sense "it is in principle impossible to simultaneously know both the position and momentum of a quantum object, becasue these properties are complementary properties". I'm not very good at QM, but my understanding is that this somehow arises from the QM formalism being in Hilbert space, whereas position and momentum measurements are done in "real" space?

Yes it's true that the formalism says you can't know position and duration precisely at the same time. The easiest way to see this is that the separate wave functions for the two are Fourier transforms of each other in the formalism, and the Fourier transform (adding up pure waves of higher and higher frequency) has a limitiation in representing sharp measurements.

But it is the sociological culture of experimentalists to challenge Big Theory, and for example the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment is claimed by its authors to violate the limitation of wave/particlee complementarity, which is closely related to the UP. Since the experiment can be well-described in the QM formalism, I don't see how this claim can be true, but it shows which way the wind is blowing. The UP could turn out to be a scale dependent, contingent property; true enough at our scales but not "all the way down". I certainly don't assert that this is so, and I will throw a hex at anyone who tries to quote me that way :). But I don't think the current state of the formalism is sufficiently aere perrenis to support philosophical conclusions.

 

[moving finger]

The UP could turn out to be a scale dependent, contingent property; true enough at our scales but not "all the way down". I certainly don't assert that this is so, and I will throw a hex at anyone who tries to quote me that way :). But I don't think the current state of the formalism is sufficiently aere perrenis to support philosophical conclusions.

Throwing foreign stuff at me, huh? Did you mean aere perennius, which according to google means "more lasting than bronze"?

I could argue the current state of ANY formalism of ANYTHING is not sufficiently aere perennius to support ANY philosophical conclusions (except perhaps for cogito, ergo sum) - but such a position would be pointless.

As I think we have discussed several times before, all rests on premises (or axioms). And all premises (and axioms) can be challenged. Hence nothing is certain.

I could be a brain in a vat. But that premise doesn't figure in my philosophy (not because I know it is false, but because that way (like solipsism) lies nothingness).

Best Regards

ps I checked up in my Griffiths - I remembered correctly (and the following seems to suggest that it is indeed aere perennius) :

(The HUP inequality) is a consequence of the decision by quantum physicists to use a Hilbert space of wave packets in order to describe quantum particles, and to make the momentum wave packet for a particular quantum state equal to the Fourier transform of the position wave packet for the same state. In the Hilbert state there are, as a fact of mathematics, no states for which the widths of the position and momentum wave packets violate the inequality.

(from Griffiths, Consistent Quantum Theory, p22/23)

 

[Tournesol]

All facts of physics are deduced form facts of mathematics. There is no
way of bypassing the maths to get at reality-in-the-raw.

 

[moving finger]

All facts of physics are deduced form facts of mathematics. There is no way of bypassing the maths to get at reality-in-the-raw.

Your analysis seems back to front. Physical facts are not "deduced from" mathematics, they are "described by" mathematics. Mathematics is a language, not a source of physical facts. To suggest that physical facts are "deduced from" mathematics is rather like suggesting that historical facts are "deduced from" the English language.

To describe any "fact of physics" we need to use a language for that description. It just so happens that the language of mathematics is well suited to the decription of 3rd person perspectives on the physical world. What you call a fact of physics is thus simply a mathematical description of the world from that perspective.

But when it comes to 1st person perspectives on conscious perception, the language of mathematics does not work. For me, my experience of seeing the colour red is a fact of physics (just as much as the fact that apples fall to the Earth is a fact of physics), but my conscious perception is not describable using mathematics. It's a 1st person fact, inaccessible to 3rd person investigation.

Best Regards

 

[selfAdjoint]

but my conscious perception is not describable using mathematics. It's a 1st person fact, inaccessible to 3rd person investigation.

What, Never?

Suppose somebody came up with an algorithm that reliably generated predictions of your first-person experiences as perceived by you? This might req

 

[moving finger]

What, Never?

Suppose somebody came up with an algorithm that reliably generated predictions of your first-person experiences as perceived by you? This might req

Several problems prevent this.

To predict some X using mathematics requires that the X be somehow objectively quantified or parameterised. My experience of the colour red is not something that can be objectively quantified or parameterised in terms of anything else.

What perspective is the prediction to be made from? It is impossible to accurately predict "my conscious experience of the colour red" assuming the perspective of someone else, because "my conscious experience of the colour red" includes me as part of that experience (ie its not a 3rd person perspective experience, its a 1st person subjective experience). The only way to predict my experience of the colour red is therefore to include me as part of the prediction - in which case we are not into prediction any more, we are into full-scale modelling, or perfect replication of the experiencing agent. Of course it is possible to replicate the experiencing agent, and if this is what you mean by algorithmic prediction then of course this is possible - but it's no longer a mathematical model or description, it's a carbon copy. But even a carbon copy would not perfectly replicate my conscious experience, because that carbon copy occupies a different position in spacetime to the position that I occupy (hence a different perspective on the world), and from the moment of creation its conscious experience and mine would begin to diverge.

Best Regards

 

[selfAdjoint]

Soorry, I couldn't finish my last post.

You are presumably the authority on what you experience. Now I believe that experience in anyone case is governed by only a finite number of parameters. After all, your brain is finite. You can't detect these parameters or see how they combine because of the "Metzinger horizon", but suppose there was a mechanism that you could hook up to that would detect them and generate some particular "red" in your consciousness, using some algorithm derived from its analysis of your natural workings. You could tune it yourself and see how it compared with your natural perception. Wouldn't that satisfy you? Or do you say this is fundamentally impossible?

 

[Tournesol]

Your analysis seems back to front. Physical facts are not "deduced from" mathematics, they are "described by" mathematics.

It's called the theory-ladenness of observation.

Mathematics is a language, not a source of physical facts. To suggest that physical facts are "deduced from" mathematics is rather like suggesting that historical facts are "deduced from" the English language.

Physical facts are derived from the mathematical
descriptions used in thories which have been tested
aposteriori. They are not deduced apriori.

To describe any "fact of physics" we need to use a language for that description. It just so happens that the language of mathematics is well suited to the decription of 3rd person perspectives on the physical world. What you call a fact of physics is thus simply a mathematical description of the world from that perspective.

It remains the case that there is no justifcation for the claim
that particles have real but unobserved (simultaneous) momenta and positions.
They cannot be obseved, and they are not in the formalism.

But when it comes to 1st person perspectives on conscious perception, the language of mathematics does not work. For me, my experience of seeing the colour red is a fact of physics (just as much as the fact that apples fall to the Earth is a fact of physics), but my conscious perception is not describable using mathematics. It's a 1st person fact, inaccessible to 3rd person investigation.

Why not, if it is a fact of physics ?

 

[Tournesol]

To predict some X using mathematics requires that the X be somehow objectively quantified or parameterised. My experience of the colour red is not something that can be objectively quantified or parameterised in terms of anything else.

Why not? Nothing has intrinsically unique properties under physicalism,
just complex combinations of a few basic properties like mass and
charge.

What perspective is the prediction to be made from? It is impossible to accurately predict "my conscious experience of the colour red" assuming the perspective of someone else, because "my conscious experience of the colour red" includes me as part of that experience (ie its not a 3rd person perspective experience, its a 1st person subjective experience).

Physicalistically speaking "you" are entirely describable form a 2rd person
PoV, given sufficient resources, and so is any (literal) perspective you might
have.

The only way to predict my experience of the colour red is therefore to include me as part of the prediction - in which case we are not into prediction any more, we are into full-scale modelling, or perfect replication of the experiencing agent.

Which is possible in principle.

If physicalism is true.

Of course it is possible to replicate the experiencing agent, and if this is what you mean by algorithmic prediction then of course this is possible - but it's no longer a mathematical model or description, it's a carbon copy. But even a carbon copy would not perfectly replicate my conscious experience, because that carbon copy occupies a different position in spacetime to the position that I occupy (hence a different perspective on the world), and from the moment of creation its conscious experience and mine would begin to diverge.

In ways which are predictable, in principle, if physicalism is true.

 

[moving finger]

Soorry, I couldn't finish my last post.

You are presumably the authority on what you experience. Now I believe that experience in anyone case is governed by only a finite number of parameters. After all, your brain is finite. You can't detect these parameters or see how they combine because of the "Metzinger horizon", but suppose there was a mechanism that you could hook up to that would detect them and generate some particular "red" in your consciousness, using some algorithm derived from its analysis of your natural workings. You could tune it yourself and see how it compared with your natural perception. Wouldn't that satisfy you? Or do you say this is fundamentally impossible?

This is possible - but it's only part of the equation.

My conscious experience of the colour red is a combination of the sensory input plus my consciousness. By "generating some particular red in my consciousness" you are not using an algorithm that "generates my conscious experience of red ex nihilo", you are using an algorithm that "generates an experience of red within my pre-existing consciousness" (which is quite a different thing).

You can easily generate an experience of red within my pre-existing consciousness - just put a red ball in my field of view. But you cannot generate my conscious experience of red ex nihilo, except by re-creating my conscious self ex-nihilo.

Best Regards

 

[selfAdjoint]

You can easily generate an experience of red within my pre-existing consciousness - just put a red ball in my field of view. But you cannot generate my conscious experience of red ex nihilo, except by re-creating my conscious self ex-nihilo.

You seem to be saying here that modular brain functionality has nothing to do with consciousness, that consciousness is some kind of monad where the entire thing has to couple to the function and no analysis is possible.

Do you believe this or am I misinterpreting you?

 

[moving finger]

You seem to be saying here that modular brain functionality has nothing to do with consciousness, that consciousness is some kind of monad where the entire thing has to couple to the function and no analysis is possible.

Do you believe this or am I misinterpreting you?

I have no idea how you arrive at this conclusion from my posts. Could you show your line of reasoning?

I believe consciousness is a unitary process which is an emergent property of certain physical systems.

If by "monad" you mean an indivisible, impenetrable unit of substance viewed as the basic constituent element of physical reality (as in the metaphysics of Leibnitz, in which case a monad is fundamental as opposed to being emergent) then how do you get from "I believe consciousness is a unitary process which is an emergent property of certain physical systems" to "consciousness is some kind of monad"?

Here is an anlaogy : Think of a unitary state, which is a state or country that is governed constitutionally as one single unit, with one constitutionally created legislature. Change the constitution or the legislature, and you still have a unitary state but it is now functioning as a slightly different unitary state. But none of this implies that there is a "monad" or indivisible basic constituent of statehood. None of the constituent parts of the unitary state contain anything we could describe as "a monad of statehood" within them. The state emerges as a consequence of the way the constituent parts are put together and work together. Consciousness emerges in an analogous way.

The entire conscious experience is indeed coupled with the experiencer, subject and object are inextricably bound up together (object here in the sense of the consciously perceived phenomena, subject in the sense of the created self within the process of consciousness which is supposed to be perceiving these phenomena), all perfectly consistent with the explanatory model proposed by Metzinger. This phenomenon of consciousness can be described and analysed "from the outside " (studies of behaviour and of the neural correlates of consciousness), but we have no language (mathematical or otherwise) with which to describe or analyse it "from the inside". Why do we have no language? Because a conscious experience is an "internal 1st person view" of a unitary process and it cannot by definition be broken down into constituent parts of subject and object, and thus by definition is not amenable to such analysis. Unitary process - not monad.

You know what your conscious experience of "seeing red" is like for you, but can you describe this conscious experience to someone else?

Best Regards

 

[moving finger]

It's called the theory-ladenness of observation.

Now there is a clue as to why 1st person facts cannot be described from a 3rd person perspective - think about it.

Physical facts are derived from the mathematical descriptions used in thories which have been tested aposteriori. They are not deduced apriori.

Mathematical descriptions may be derived, but physical facts are not derived, they are observed and described. The so-called human-derived description of the “law of gravity” (described by Newton’s or Einstein’s equations) is not a prescriptive law which tells the universe how it must behave; the equations simply attempt to describe how the universe does seem to behave. Whether Newton’s or Einstein’s equations are indeed accurate descriptions of how the universe behaves is then tested by experiment.

It remains the case that there is no justifcation for the claim that particles have real but unobserved (simultaneous) momenta and positions. They cannot be obseved, and they are not in the formalism.

Both the hypothesis "quantum objects have real but unobservable (simultaneous) momenta and positions" AND its negation is one that cannot be tested, therefore is an unscientific hypothesis. From a scientific point of view, the question is meaningless. It follows that the question "what is the precise momentum of this quantum object given its precise position?" is also meaningless.

Why not, if it is a fact of physics ?

We have been round this loop several times. Where is the law which says all facts of physics must be accessible to 3rd person investigation?

Why not? Nothing has intrinsically unique properties under physicalism, just complex combinations of a few basic properties like mass and charge.

Every physical object has properties which emerge from the detailed configuration of component parts. The height of a chair is a property of that chair, but it is not simply related to the mass and charge of it’s constituent molecules – it depends critically on how those constituents are put together. Consciousness is such an emergent property, but unlike the height of a chair, each consciousness is unique because each consciousness emerges from the detailed internal configuration of the brain.

Physicalistically speaking "you" are entirely describable form a 2rd person PoV, given sufficient resources, and so is any (literal) perspective you might have.

Physicalism does not entail that everything is describable from the 3rd person perspective.

perfect replication of the experiencing agent.

Which is possible in principle.

I am not sure that perfect replication of an entity is possible even in principle - it seems to me that you would run up against the HUP (you could not be certain that you had perfectly replicated all quantum states, because it is impossible in principle to know simultaneously the complementary properties of those quantum states).

But even if possible (which from the above looks unlikely), perfect replication does not entail predicting my experience of the colour red from a 3rd person perspective.

In ways which are predictable, in principle, if physicalism is true.

I assume this is a mistake. Are you suggesting that physicalism entails predictability? In which case (according to you) in an indeterminable (let alone an indeterministic) world physicalism is most definitely not true?

Physicalism does not entail that everything is either describable or predictable from the 3rd person perspective.

Best Regards

 

[selfAdjoint]

I have no idea how you arrive at this conclusion from my posts. Could you show your line of reasoning?

I believe consciousness is a unitary process which is an emergent property of certain physical systems

If by "monad" you mean an indivisible, impenetrable unit of substance viewed as the basic constituent element of physical reality (as in the metaphysics of Leibnitz, in which case a monad is fundamental as opposed to being emergent) then how do you get from "I believe consciousness is a unitary process which is an emergent property of certain physical systems" to "consciousness is some kind of monad"?.

I was afraid that my use of the phrase "some kind of monad" would strart a false trail in the direction of Leibnitz; no I didn't mean that. I was trying to express the idea you here call unitary, without using the word, which has a completely diffrent meaning in physics.

Here is an anlaogy : Think of a unitary state, which is a state or country that is governed constitutionally as one single unit, with one constitutionally created legislature. Change the constitution or the legislature, and you still have a unitary state but it is now functioning as a slightly different unitary state. But none of this implies that there is a "monad" or indivisible basic constituent of statehood. None of the constituent parts of the unitary state contain anything we could describe as "a monad of statehood" within them. The state emerges as a consequence of the way the constituent parts are put together and work together. Consciousness emerges in an analogous way.

That still means that consciousness is 'emergent" at all times (dynamically) from the whole brain (and probably the whole body too). I just can't go along with that personally. It seems to me that your country could change in one feature and not in another, and anything that remained unchanged through all such processes could hardly be anything more than a name. I am a strongly believing US patriot, but I don't thing "The United States of America" is a real thing apart from the COnstitution, the laws, the people, the history, and so on and so on.

The entire conscious experience is indeed coupled with the experiencer, subject and object are inextricably bound up together (object here in the sense of the consciously perceived phenomena, subject in the sense of the created self within the process of consciousness which is supposed to be perceiving these phenomena), all perfectly consistent with the explanatory model proposed by Metzinger. This phenomenon of consciousness can be described and analysed "from the outside " (studies of behaviour and of the neural correlates of consciousness), but we have no language (mathematical or otherwise) with which to describe or analyse it "from the inside". Why do we have no language? Because a conscious experience is an "internal 1st person view" of a unitary process and it cannot by definition be broken down into constituent parts of subject and object, and thus by definition is not amenable to such analysis. Unitary process - not monad.

You know what your conscious experience of "seeing red" is like for you, but can you describe this conscious experience to someone else?

Best Regards

That is why I began my post by saying you were the authority on your experiences and tried to come up with a thought experiment adapted to that. In any case, inability to explain qualia doesn't come from some special status of consciousness, it obviously comes from a deep limitation on language. I can well believe Penrose's claim that minds transcend digital computers (language "deep structure" is essentially a digital algorithm), but that doesn't mean all rational systems are mute: there is always analog! Tarski vs Goedel.

 

[moving finger]

That still means that consciousness is 'emergent" at all times (dynamically) from the whole brain (and probably the whole body too). I just can't go along with that personally.

OK, understood, but I can. And I think that's what Metzinger's ideas boil down to also (ie that consciousness is a continuously emergent dynamic process). It also seems (to me) to be the view of the majority of research neuroscientists (see the work of Antonio Damasio). In Damasio's own words - "you are the music, while the music lasts" (in his excellent book The Feeling of What Happens)

It seems to me that your country could change in one feature and not in another, and anything that remained unchanged through all such processes could hardly be anything more than a name. I am a strongly believing US patriot, but I don't thing "The United States of America" is a real thing apart from the COnstitution, the laws, the people, the history, and so on and so on.

The "United States of America" is a name that we give to the property of a particular phenomenon which emerges from a complex entity comprising the combination of country, people, constitution, laws, history etc.

In the same way, if we ask "what is the University of Oxford?" we are quite right in describing it as an academic institution located in Oxford, England, which is also the oldest university in the English-speaking world. But if we were to try to locate this University in space, we would find that there is no single physical building, or document, or person, or group of people, that we could point to and say "there, THAT is the University of Oxford". Rather, the University is an emergent property which has an identity that is characterised by a particular collection of buildings, staff, students, traditions, libraries, documents, ideas, statutes, etc etc, each of which is changeable and fluid (and each in its own way contributing to the overall properties of the University), but the component parts are changeable and fluid in such a way that the overall identity which is characterised as "the University of Oxford" continues to exist even though the component parts may change substantially. Does this mean the University of Oxford is (in your opinion) not "real"?

Need I point out how one can draw some very close analogies between this description of the identity of the University of Oxford and the emergence of a conscious identity? (and no, I am NOT suggesting the University of Oxford is a conscious entity!)

Whether you call such an emergent property "real" or not seems to me to be a question of semantics (ie it depends how you define real). How are we to differentiate between "real properties" and "unreal properties"?

inability to explain qualia doesn't come from some special status of consciousness, it obviously comes from a deep limitation on language

You are partly right. The inability indeed does come from a deep limitation on language - which is the in principle impossibility of describing the 1st person perspective on/in the states of phenomenal consciousness using any kind of language - which in turn is a consequence of the "special status" of phenomenal consciousness (the fact that it is a 1st person perspective).

I think Tournesol may have (perhaps unintentionally) hit the nail on the head with his earlier reference to the theory-ladenness of observation. Quine argues that everything one observes is interpreted through a prior understanding of other theories and concepts. Whenever we describe observations (whether we are using the English language, or mathematics), we are constantly utilizing terms and measurements that our society has adopted. Therefore, it would be impossible for someone else to understand these observations if they are unfamiliar with, or disagree with, the theories that these terms come from.

Now extend this to the attempted description or interpretation of a 1st person perspective on phenomenal consciousness. There is nowhere to start, because by definition a 1st person perspective on phenomenal consciousness does not share any terms that we might use in such a description with anyone else. In short, there exists (in principle) no common language with which we can describe or interpret phenomenal consciousness.

Here is a useful metaphor that may help to visualise the idea I am trying to get across : Each conscious agent exists on an island of 1st person perspective subjectivity, each of these islands isolated from the other islands of conscious awareness in terms of direct communication, but at the same time linked to these other islands via the intervening sea of 3rd person perspective. The only language of communication between these islands is the common language of the 3rd person perspective "sea" that lies between them; the conscious agents cannot communicate with each other directly at the 1st person perspective level because there is no common language at that level.

Best Regards

 

[Tournesol]

I don't see the point in defining something
in such a ways as to make it impossible. We don't define knowledge as omniscience.
the point is that we could define knowledge as omniscience, in which case it would be (naturalistically) impossible.

In the same way, we could define free will as the kind that requires ultimate responsibility (UR) for actions (the kind of free will that libertarians would like us to have), in which case this makes free will (naturalistically) impossible.

If there is no ultimate responsibiity (as defined by Kane and myself), then it makes no sense to punish the shooter and not the gun -- they are both causally repsonsible.
Is that the conclusion you wish to draw ?

Thing's don't become possible just because you believe in them.
Agreed! This is certainly true in the case of UR!

How fortunate that I have written an elaborate defence of UR, isntead of just
saying that I believe in it.

But you can define words realistically.

And the "realistic" definition of free will is either the compatibilist or the free will skeptic definition (which latter incidentally is effectively the same as your definition), which does not entail UR.

Compatiblists think people are responsible for their actions. You, apparently, don't. Unless you mean
something different from Kane and myself by "UR"

MovingFinger's "infinite regress" argument is an exampe of what Daniel Dennett calls the "Prime Mammal" fallacy

I suggest this is a false analogy, based on a category error. Whereas UR is supervenient on UR

Huh ? Did you mean to write that ?

(UR cannot be created naturalistically within a system where there is no UR already present),

Why not ?

There is the responsibility we attribute to agents, and there is whatever mechanism objectively
underpins it, if anything does. Which are you talking about ?

People can't have responsibility
attributed to them unless they already have had responsibility attributed to them ? That barely
makes sense.

People can't have an mechanism for UR unless the parts of the mechanism have UR themselves?

That is quite arbitrary and unprecedented. None of my neurons can remember the capital of Norway,
but *I* can. There are such things as high-level features.

(and let's not forget that where there is no incompatibilist
reponsibility, thre is still compatibilist responsibility,
and where there is no compatibilist reponsibility,
there is still causal reponsibility)

In other words, could you show how UR is created within an agent?

Minimally, an agent has UR if there are objective grounds for subjecting that agent to praise and blame in order to modify their behaviour.

Sorry, Tournesol, but this does not show “how UR is created within an agent” –

UR isn't a thing that is created like bile in the liver. We hold agents repsonsible, and
may or may not propose mechanism that justiy that nonarbitrarily.

it simply describes how we arbitrarily

It may be arbirtrary for determinsits, but it is not for us libertarians
as a I clearly state:

"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."

assign responsibility simpliciter to agents, and how (some of us) assume that this responsibility is also somehow “ultimate responsibility”.

It is only UR if it is something more that causal responsibility.

You have not shown how (ie in what way) UR is created,

The objective mechanism for UR is of course the RIG/SIS mechanism.

or how (ie in what way) we can detect such UR (as opposed to simply assuming that it exists).

Presumable meaning how we can detect an objective basis for UR.

Discussed here: http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_darwin.html#pseudo

the theory of the evolution of species does not posit that “every mammal is descended from a mammal”,

It posits soemthing close to that. It certainly doesn't posit that reptiles can give
brith to mammals.

or that “every human has human parents”. Speciation boundaries are often, in the limit, the result of arbitrary human judgements. If one was to follow my own ancestry back through the generations until one came to the primate ancestors of homo-sapiens, at what point (in which generation) would we say “aha, this generation is no longer homo-sapiens, it is something else”. The point in the family tree at which we say “this generation is homo-sapiens, but the immediately prior generation is not” is in effect an arbitrary judgement-call.

That is the point! There is no well-defined point where responsibility kicks in. But that doesn't
mean it it goes back forever ("the parents of a mammal must be 100% mammalian"), and that doesn't mean
it doesn't exist at all. The parents of a mammal must be more-or-less mammalian,
and to be a responsible agent, you must be able to more-or-less exert control over your future
state of mind.

In real evolutionary theory , mammalhood simply tapers off or fades away -- it neither regresses infinitely nor stops dead at a Prime Mammal. That is the approach I adopt about rational self-control.

With respect, you are deluding yourself if you think the emergence of species is in any way analagous to the “emergence” of UR. You have not established that your model possesses UR, you simply assume it does.

You are evading the point. I have shown how my theory does not incur infinite regresses.

I have also described a mechansim that does justify the non-arbitrary ascription of
responsibility to agents.

http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_darwin.html#semicompatiblism

MF thinks a regress must be entailed because he thinks that an action is only free if it is entirely devoid of outside influnce, with the corollary that you are only responsible for your future state at all if you are 100% responsible for it.

Sorry, but this is not an accurate summary of my reason for postulating infinite regress. A regress is entailed because 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).

which is a regress...but not an infinite one. Only infintie regresses are problemantic.

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.

More or less.

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

More or less.

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

More or less.

intentionally in a similar fashion, which means there must have been some prior intentional state N-2…… and so on ad infinitum.

No, not ad infinitum. Not if you take the more-or-lesses into
account. Suppose my state at time N is 90% intentionally brought about by my state
at time N-1, and my state at time N-1 is 90% intentionally brought about by my state
at time N-2, and so on.

So, projecting backwards:-
N is 90% intentionally brought about by N-1
N is 81% intentionally brought about by N-2
N is 73% intentionally brought about by N-3
N is 59% intentionally brought about by N-4
N is 47% intentionally brought about by N-5
N is 43% intentionally brought about by N-6
N is 33% intentionally brought about by N-7
N is 31% intentionally brought about by N-8
N is 28% intentionally brought about by N-9
N is 25% intentionally brought about by N-10
N is 23% intentionally brought about by N-11
N is 20% intentionally brought about by N-12
N is 18% intentionally brought about by N-13
N is 17% intentionally brought about by N-14
N is 14% intentionally brought about by N-15
N is 12% intentionally brought about by N-16
N is 10% intentionally brought about by N-17

etc etc.

It tapers off, just like mammalhood.

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).
I am open to any explanation or suggestion as to how this infinite regress can be avoided.

The same way Prime Mammals are, as I have pointed out several times.

 

[Tournesol]

An agent is responsible if the have control over their actions. They don't have to have contol over their control (ad infinitum).

If we wish to claim that the agent has ultimate control over its actions, then yes they do have to have control over their control. (If someone else is in "control of my control", then in an ultimate sense I am not in fact in control of my actions therefore cannot claim to be in ultimate control)

Non-sequitur. The fact that you are not in control-of-your-control does not mean
that someone else is. It just means the process of control is a "at a least partial" "more or less"
thing. Like mammalhood.

Taking your claim literally, then a simple thermostat is responsible by virtue of the fact that it controls the temperature of a room.

I said the regressive control-of-control isn't necessary for UR. I didn't say that non-regressive
control simpliciteris sufficient.

What I said was:-

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.

In the “responsible simpliciter” sense this is of course quite correct, a thermostat is indeed responsible for controlling the temperature of a room. But it does not possesses ultimate responsibility, precisely because it does not have “control over its control” (ad infinitum).

It does not possesses UR because it has [n]neither[/b] Causal Originative Power [nb] nor [/b] Rational Self Control.

Your argument makes the same mistake as the confusion between “responsibility simpliciter” and “ultimate responsibility”. An inanimate machine can be responsible for an action, but that does not mean it possesses ultimate responsibility. A thermostat controls the temperature of a room, but that does not mean that it is in ultimate control (because the control it exerts is determined by a pre-existing design and programme which are not under the thermostat's control).

I have stated criteria for UR which are more than any theormostat
posses, whilst at the same time not involving an endless regress of
control-of-control.

To look at it another way, if no-one has UR, then no-one is morally responsible. Is that something you really believe ?

First define moral responsibility. If you mean “ultimate moral responsibility” then the concept is incoherent (hence no-one possesses ultimate moral responsibility – and yes, I do believe this). But moral responsibility without the “ultimate” qualification, like responsibility simpliciter, is quite coherent and does exist.

I have of course, already answered this question:

"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."

Could you show how the infinite regress implicit in UR can be avoided?

What infinite regress ?
Read the paper that you pasted the link to in your last post :

http://www.morris.umn.edu/academic/p...allthesis.html

This paper clearly explains the nature of the infinite regress.

..in Kane's theory. I am aware of the faults in Kane's theory , and I have formulated
my theory to avoid them."However, Kane’s own account of free action seems to imply that Johnny’s first SFA was caused by some indeterministic
something which Johnny could have no control over."

My theory differs from Kane's in that

1) the control kicks in *after* the "coin toss" (ie the SIS filters the output of the RIG)

3) There are no SFA's as unique, rare events. Rather, self-formation is an ongoing process.

If I am to be ultimately responsible for my state N, then it follows that I must also be ultimately responsible for my state N-1, the causally antecedent state to N. But then I must also be ultimately responsible for my state N-2, the causally antecedent state to N-1, and so on ad infinituum. To avoid this regress you need to explain how it can come about that I can be held ultimately responsible for my state N in the case where I am NOT ultimately responsible for the causally antecedent state N-1. Suggesting that state N is not fully causally determined and has some indeterministic component does not generate ultimate responsibility.

You can be somehwere between totally responsible and totally irresponsinle.

(and suggesting that I need only be "partially ultimately responsible" rather than fully responsible for an action, whatever partial responsibility might mean, makes no difference to the injfinite regress argument, as shown towards the end of this post - you cannot generate "partial UR" from "zero UR" any more easily than you can generate "full UR" from "zero UR")

So how do partial mammals come about ?

In any case, you never have zero repsonsibility, because you always have
semicompatiblist responsibility (Rational Self Control without Casual Originative Power).

The conscious rational state I am in today needs to be connected with the states i was in yesterday and tommorow, but it odens't need 100% connection. I don't need to have full conscious, rational control from the moment I was born. It can "fade in". As of course it does, developmentally.

How does it “fade in”? By what process can a system which is not ultimately responsible for its actions at one moment in time then become ultimately responsible at a later moment in time?

By what mechanism does an organism that was a bit less mammalian have progeny that are
a bit more mammalian ? To have UR for your actions you neeed your "at least partly" bring
them about, to be responsible for the state of mind that brings your actions
about, you need ot be "at least partly" reponsible for it. The "at least partly" can
build up in gradual degrees, like mammalhood.

How can it come about that I can be held ultimately responsible for my state N if I am NOT ultimately responsible for the causally antecedent state N-1?

It's not black-and-white.

I agree conscious responsibility simpliciter “fades in” as conscious control fades in – but again we must not confuse responsibility simpliciter with ultimate responsibility.

What IYO is the difference ?

To do this, you will need to (i) establish the necessary & sufficient conditions for UR, then (ii) show that the agent satisfies these conditions.

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.

Are you suggesting that these conditions are necessary & sufficient (N&S) for UR?

YES, already!

In other words, any agent which meets these conditions therefore possesses UR? I could in principle build a fancy thermostat which possesses “rational self-control”, with an added internal random number generator implanted to ensure that at least some of the thermostat’s behaviour is not “the inevitable outcome of external influences”. Such a machine would meet your above N&S conditions - does it follow that it possesses UR?

Yes. But it would be a very fancy theromometer. AI researchers
have been chasing human-style rationallity for decades.

If we cannot show either (a) that UR exists within an agent, or (b) propose some credible hypothesis as to how UR might be created within an agent, then any belief in the existence of UR is an issue of faith, not of science or philosophy.

Originally Posted by Tournesol
"If".

As explained above, you have not shown that UR exists or is created within any agent (when I asked you to show how UR is created within an agent, you simply described an assumption).

Of course: I am arguing that naturalist libertarianism is theoretically possible. Possibilities
are hypotheses are assumptions. The question is whether they are internally consistent.

You are also using assumptions in your counterargument; for instance it is just
as much an assumption that fundametnal indetermimism is indetectable as it is that
it is detectable.

Your argument is based simply on an assumption that UR exists,

I am assuming people are responsible for their actions.

with inadequate coherent evidential justification or rational support. That’s why I call it an issue of faith. That’s why the “If” – because you have not shown that belief in the existence UR is anything more than faith.

I am arguing that naturalist libertarianism is theoretically possible. It isredudant
to keep pointing out to to me that my avowedly hypothetical argument is indeed hypothetical.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a separate but related point, could you explain how your definition of FW differs from the "free will skeptic" position?

Hopefully not at all.

The point is that the explanatory mechansim is novel, not the explanandum.

A free will skeptic (such as myself) would say that the fact that an agent can rationally choose and consciously perform certain actions (ie act deterministically), some of which are not necessarily brought about inevitably by external circumstances (ie some of them may have indeterministic causes), is completely compatible with a simple mixture of determinism and indeterminsim, can be easily modeled by a simple machine, but does not satisfy the necessary conditions for libertarian free will by virtue of the fact that it is silent on the issue of UR.

Says who?
Says me. Your definition of free will is :
"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".

"not brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances"
means indeterminism; Indeterminism entails Causal Originative Power, which is one of the
two components of the mechanism for UR. The other is rationallity which is also given in the definition.

You seem to be defining UR in some way different from myself, Dennett, kane, etc.
Not at all. My argument works for UR as defined by Kane, as shown below.

"According to Kane, in order for us to be responsible for our actions, we must be at least partly responsible for the sufficient causes that move us to action."
(here we assume that in the above "responsible" means "ultimately responsible")

And what about the causes of those causes?
Adding the qualification “at least partly” doesn’t change the argument.

Yes it does, in the same way that "at least partly mammalian" does?

If I am not (at least partly) UR for the state N-1 which is the sufficient cause of state N, then how can I possibly be (at least partly) UR for state N? (Kane agrees that I cannot).

You are causally and semicompatiblistically responsible for N-1.

But if I am to be (at least partly) UR for the state N-1, then I must also in turn be (at least partly) UR for the sufficient causal state N-2… and so on.

To be repsonsible is not the same as being causally responsible.
You can bring about states responsibly so long as your SIS
is working correctly. The SIS will filter out any
excesively irresponsible suggestions of the RIG.

How do you avoid the infinite regress of (partial) UR? To do this, you will need to show how you can generate partial UR from a starting state of zero UR…….. can you? If you cannot show how it is done, your belief in UR is an article of faith and not of philosophy or science (which unfortunately then puts you in the supernaturalistic camp).

You always have semicompatilbist resposibility by virtue of having rationallity.
There is never a state of zero responsibility.

By the way, thank you very much for the link at http://www.morris.umn.edu/academic/p...allthesis.html

This paper clearly agrees that UR does indeed lead to infinite regress - perhaps you should read it yourself? This is one of the main conclusions of the paper :

Kane’s own theory of freedom does not seem to meet the UR condition. His notion of Self-Forming Actions seems to be inherently flawed. Kane tries to use SFAs to evade the problem of regression concerning the origins of our act. However, Kane’s theory does not overcome the regress problem. Kane’s theory does not give and adequate account of how agents can gain responsibility-grounding control.

Already answered. I avoid SFA's

I am simply claiming the same for your "theory".

But my theory isn't the same ans Kane's!

Incoherent means self-contradictory.

Not at all.

Incoherent means “it doesn’t hang together and make clear, rational sense”. Someone who is incoherent is someone who is unable to think or express their thoughts in a clear or orderly manner.

A self-contradictory statement might be called incoherent (but this is arguable), but incoherent statements are not necessarily self-contradictory.

Once you depart from self-contradiction as the criterion for incoherence,
you depart from what can be demonstrated in a clear and objective manner.

What is "hanging together" ? Who gets to decide what rationallity is ?

Is it coherent to quote a criticis of theory A as also being a criticism of theory B ?

Whether one believes the world is intrinsically deterministic or indeterministic is a matter of faith, not science.

Unless is is proveable. Which you don't know, one way or the other.
But I do know – it follows quite naturally from the HUP.

If the HUP is epistemic and non ontic. Which you don't know either.

Can we prove the world is or is not completely deterministic? No, the HUP shows that this is impossible (ie there are limits to our knowledge of the world, thus there may be some deterministic relationships, such as hidden variables, which are in principle undetectable).

Or there may be detctable hidden variables. After all, local hidden variables
could have been detected by the Aspect experiment.

Can we prove the world is or is not at least partly indeterministic? No, again the HUP shows that this is impossible. Any indeterminism we think we observe may simply be a result of epistemic indeterminability (as opposed to ontic indeterminism), as a consequence of the limitations in our knowledge of the world.

Or it may not.

 

[Tournesol]

ntroduction
Some libertarians argue that free will must exist in order to underpin moral responsibility. Compatibilists have developed responses to these arguments which are, up to a point successful. That does not count as a defeat for libertarianism because there are other arguments for free will. Nor do they count as a victory for compatibilism, because they do not account for aspects of the free-will package other than moral responsibility -- for which reason they are known as "semicompatibilist" arguments. We avoided listing the argument from responsibility in our prima_facie argument for free will knowing that there is a semicompatibilist response.

"These arguments which are, up to a point successful" -- up to which point ?

There are five kinds or degrees of responsibility

1. Causal responsibility
2. Semicompatibilist Responsibility Based on Rationality alone
3. Compatibilist Responsibility, Intention and Duress
4. Naturalist Libertarian responsibility Based on Causal Origination of Action
5. Supertnaturalist Libertarian Responsibility

Casual Responsibility
We can say a tree-limb blown off in a storm is responsible for killing someone, but that is hardly moral responsibility. To say something is responsible in this sense is to say no more than that it is a cause. Hence this weakest grade of responsibility is causal responsibility.

The point about moral responsibility is that we hold some entities responsible and not others. A meaningful argument for compatibilism, must be more than a mere convention, it must have an objective basis. The basis is the ability to intentionally originate actions. We do not blame the gun for the murderer, the artist, not her brushes. The sight of Basil Fawlty thrashing his car for failing to start is absurd.
Semicompatibilist Responsibility Based on Rationality
So the compatibilist needs a criterion that objectively picks out agents as being having responsibililty beyond the merely causal responsibility of the brush and the gun -- and the criterion needs to be compatible with determinism. The obvious candidate is rationality. People have rationality whereas guns and brushes don't. Moreover, the criterion justifies the action. It makes sense to praise or condemn rational agents because they can learn from their mistakes -- unlike Basil Fawlty's car. However, this approach says nothing to support the idea that an agent's actions are not "brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances" (otherwise known as AP). Since it attempts to explain responsibility without explaining the freedom of the will it is rightly known as semicompatibilism.

Compatibilist Responsibility, Intention and Duress
The existence of Alternative Possibilities (otherwise known as Elbow Room or could-have-done-otherwise) is relevant to responsibility because we do not hold people for their action where alternate courses of actions were not open to them for reasons of duress or incapacity. Whereas the semicompatibilist only holds responsibility to be compatible with determinism the compatibilist holds that AP's are as well. The compatibilist of course can explain the presence or absence of constraint without making any assumptions about determinism -- up to a point. Her problem is to explain why only certain entities are subject to constraint in the first place. There is something about certain entities which makes them constrainable. In the language of the Libertarian, your will cannot be blocked, stifled or frustrated if you have no will. As we have seen, there is something about human agents that compatabilists can appeal to that picks them our objectively as responsible, and that is rationality. But is rationality something that can be constrained? Surely -- for the libertarian anyway -- what is constrained by circumstance is action, not thought. At this point the compatibilist triumphantly produces intention (aim, desire) as something that can be hindered by external circumstances, and which is compatible with determinism. And this works --up to a point. If you did something you intended to do, you are responsible, and if you did something which was not your intention, it was accidental or under duress. But the intention has to have the right sort of causal history. If the intention "flew into your head" shortly before you performed an action based on it, without being based on previous intentional stated, you action was not responsible -- or rather you are not a responsible person. Equally, our intuition is that people, or other entities, are not responsible if they did not originate their intention. We don't hold people who are acting under hypnotic suggestion responsible. If a mad scientist created an intelligent killing-machine, we would hold him ultimately responsible even if the machine was a sophisticated enough AI to be deemed rational.

Naturalist Libertarian responsibility Based on Causal Origination of Action
That is the essence of the libertarian's claim to be able to provide a stronger basis for our intuitions about responsibility than any variety of compatibilist. The missing factor the libertarian can supply is origination. Responsibility lies with human agents (acting intentionally and without duress) -- the "buck" stops with them -- because that is where the (intention behind the0 action originated.

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 indeterministic cause; the indeterministic cause stands at the "head" of a cause-effect chain. Thus, such causes can pin down 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 mechanisms 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 rationality, 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 is worth mentioning some of the exaggerated, perhaps supernatural ideas that can get confused with indeterminism-based Origination. One is "causa sui", the idea of an entity creating or causing itself out of nothing. Naturalistically this is impossible -- an entity has to exist in the first place to cause something. Associating self-determination with self-causation is a route to a superficially convincing argument against free will, but the tow ideas are really distinct. Self-determination -- self-control -- is not just naturalistically acceptable, it has its own branch of science, cybernetics.

 

[Tournesol]

The Metaphysical Objections: Prime Mammals and Ultimate Responsibility
"Ultimate Responsibility" is a term introduced by the Naturalistic Libertarian Robert Kane. It, and the thinking behind it , have led to some confusion.

"Only a Libertarian account, Kane claims, can provide the features we [...] yearn for, which he calls ultimate Responsibility. Libertarianism begins with a familiar claim: If determinism is true every, then every decision I make, like every breath I take, is an effect, ultimately,, of chains of causes leading back into times before I was born. [...] As many have claimed, then, if my decisions are caused by events leading back before my birth, I can be casually responsible for the results of my deeds in the same way a tree limb falling in a storm can be causally responsible for the results of the death of the person it falls on, but it's not the limb's fault that it was only a strong as it was, or that the wind blew so fiercely, or that the tree grew so close to the footpath. To be morally responsible I have to be the ultimate source of my decision and that can be true only if no earlier influences were sufficient to secure the outcome, which was truly "up to me". Harry Truman used to have a sign on his desk in the Oval office saying the "The Buck Stops Here". The human mind has a place where the buck stops, Kane says, and only libertarianism can provide this kind of free will, the kind that provides Ultimate Responsibility".

(Daniel Dennett, "Freedom Evolves", p99

Let's get one confusion out of the way: the libertarian only needs to claim that responsibility stops with the agent, not that there is a single place within the agent where it stops, or a single time at which it stops.

Dennett has an eloquent series of argumens against a "single place" within the mind where it "all happens", a "homunculus", which he has developed in "Consciousness Explained", and which he re-deploys in "Freedom Evolves".

If it really matters, as Libertarians think, then we had better shield your process of deliberation from all such external influence

Why all ? Our definition of free will is "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" is not "all" there is no need for such "shielding". The engineering is not required by the specification. (Ultimate) Responsibility belongs to the agent as a whole, not to a subsystem within the agent. We are quite happy to accept Dennett's distributed model of the mind.

Compatiblists and determinists are able to argue that it is undesirable for a "snap" decion to be made randomly, since such dcisions need to be reliable -- ineed, they may even be "life or death" decisions. This is far from being a smoking-gun refutation of Libertarianism, however. The libertarian only needs to be able to say that her decision could have been different under the same exernal circumstances at time T. The libertarian's internal state could have been different under the circumstances prevailing at T (In other words, there are sets of possible worlds where everything outside the libertarian is identical), so the action resulting from the libertarian's internal state could have been different, even if it was brought about more-or-less determinstically by their state at time T. Thus they coudl have done otherwise so long as the series of states leading up to the reactive snap decision could have been different. Thus, freedom of the will can, as it were, be stored and used at a later date. (We also argue for this point here; and compare what Dennett says about Libet)

To use another metaphor, it is as though there is a conscious executive which sets "policy" which less conscious sub-systems then follow in making snap decisions. In an organisation, responsibility stops with the executive who sets policy, rather than the junior staff member who implements it. Likewise people are held morally and legally responsible for acts which are snap decisions, because they have trained themselves to react in that particular way.

However, this idea of stored inentionallity (or deferred responsibility) has some problems, whcih we will now consider.

Dennett has a real point against Kane with his accusation that there is a special time at which free will occurs. In Kane's theory the essence of free will is something called a "self forming action" which occurs at particular times in the life of an individual. This leads to a number of problems:

* 1 An SFA may or may not occur at all in an individual, yet by all common-sense standards an individual without SFA's is as free and responsible as anyone else.
* 2 Since SFA's are the essence of an individual's free will, they must also be the essence of an individual's responsibility. Yet they are indeterministic -- mere caprice!
* 3 There must have been a first SFA , which itself cannot have been brought about intentionally, freely and responsibly.

First Objection to Self-Forming Actions
An SFA may or may not occur at all in an individual, yet by all common-sense standards an individual without SFA's is as free and responsible as anyone else. This is a valid objection to SFA One of the innovations of our approach will be to replace Kane's isolated SFA's with an "ongoing process of self-formation" which all physically and psychologically normal adults engage in.
Second Objection to Self-Forming Actions
Since SFA's are the essence of an individual's free will, they must also be the essence of an individual's responsibility. Yet they are indeterministic -- mere caprice! This is a very important objection which gets to the heart of what people dislike about indeterminism-based free will. Bear in mind that we have accepted Dennett's point about the distributed mind. It is the agent as a whole who is responsible, not the any particular part of the agent, including any "indeterminism" module the agent might possess. The agents actions are not caused by any particular neuron, or any particular subsystem, but by the central nervous system acting in concert. An "indeterminism" module would therefore not cause actions, simpliciter, any more than any other module.

Moreover, in our model we posit another module in addition to the indeterminism module (or Random Idea Generator) whose function is specifically to "filter" the output of the Random Idea Generator. Thus the objection that you cannot control which signal the indeterminism module is going to generate is vitiated by placing the control after the generation of the signal. (Just as Natural Selection rescues Darwinian evolution from being mere caprice by acting on genes after they have mutated). There is no straightforward inference from a lack of causal responsibility for one's indeterminism generator to a lack of moral responsibility an agent

Finally, recall that in our discussion of semicompatibilism and responsibility we agreed that there are forms of moral responsibility which are compatible with determinism. Thus, responsibility does not kick in when and only when the R.I.G or indeterminism module fires; responsibility is not created ex nihilo. 3
Third Objection to Self-Forming Actions
There must have been a first SFA , which itself cannot have been brought about intentionally, freely and responsibly. It's important to understand the difference between a regress and an infinite regress. Earlier, we said:

And this works --up to a point. If you did something you intended to do, you are responsible, and if you did something which was not your intention, it was accidental or under duress. But the intention has to have the right sort of causal history. If the intention "flew into your head" shortly before you performed an action based on it, without being based on previous intentional stated, you action was not responsible -- or rather you are not a responsible person. Equally, our intuition is that people, or other entities, are not responsible if they did not originate their intention. We don't hold people who are acting under hypnotic suggestion responsible. If a mad scientist created an intelligent killing-machine, we would hold him ultimately responsible even if the machine was a sophisticated enough AI to be deemed rational.

Since we must exclude capricious intentional states, states that do not have enough of history of being produced intentionally by previous states. Thus, there must be some kind of a regress to intetional states. Dennett has a parable that can act as a warning of what happens if you think about regresses in a too rigid, absolute way. it also illustrates that this is indeed a structural problem about regresses, not a problem about free will specifically).

"You may think you're a mammal, and that dogs and cows and whales are mammals, but there really aren't any mammals at all -- there can't be! Here's a philosophical argument to prove it.

1) Every mammal has a mammal for a mother
2) If there have been any mammals at all, there have been only a finite number of mammals
3) but if there has been even one mammal, by (1), there has been an infinity of mammals , which contradicts (2), so there can't have been any mammals.

Since we know perfectly well there are mammals, we take this argument only a challenge to discover what fallacy is lurking within it. [..] A gradual transition occurred from clear mammals to clear reptiles, with a lot of hard-to-classify intermediaries filling the gaps "

(Daniel Dennett, "Freedom Evolves", p126)

The absolutist way of thinking about things falls on the "infinite" side of the dichotomy. For the absolutist, and intentional state has to be fully and 1005 brought about by the preceding state...ad infinitum.

Kane's SFA's fall on the other side ...the regress just stops dead.

We favour the kind of solution that is the correct solution to the Prime Mammal problem. The parent of a mammal only needs to be more-or-less mammalian. The mammalhood can fade out as you trace things go back. Likewise the "at least partially" clause in the definition of free will allows us to regard present intentional states as being only more-or-less engendered by previous ones, so that the causal and intentional history of an intentional state peters out rather than going back forever or stopping dead.

Note that we are now equipped with a variety of ways of dealing with the regress problem:-

1. Libertarian responsibility does not arise out of nothing, it arises out of semicompatibilist responsibility.
2. There is no requirement that every intentional state is brought about 100% intentionally by the preceding state.
3. There is no need to identify "you", your "self" with any particular module, including the "indeterminism module".
4. There is no one-to-one correspondence between actions and the output of the "indeterminism module", so actions are not "just random".
5. The fact that you cannot control what your "indeterminism" module will do is vitiated by the fact that you -- the rest of you -- do not have to act on its decisions.

The Empirical Objection:Does Benjamin Libet's Research Empirically Disprove Free Will?
Scientifically informed sceptics about FW often quote a famous experiment by Benjamin Libet, which supposedly shows that a kind of signal called a "Readiness Potential", detectable by electrodes, precedes a conscious decisions, and is a reliable indicator of the decision, and thus -- so the claim goes -- indicates that our decisions are not ours but made for us by unconscious processes.

In fact, Libet himself doesn't draw a sweepingly sceptical conclusion from his own results. For one thing, Readiness Potentials are not always followed by actions. he believes it is possible for consciousness to intervene with a "veto" to the action:

"The initiation of the freely voluntary act appears to begin in the brain unconsciously, well before the person consciously knows he wants to act! Is there, then, any role for conscious will in the performing of a voluntary act?...To answer this it must be recognised that conscious will (W) does appear about 150milliseconds before the muscle is activated, even though it follows the onset of the RP. An interval of 150msec would allow enough time in which the conscious function might affect the final outcome of the volitional process."

(Libet, quoted in "Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 230 )

"This suggests our conscious minds may not have free will but rather free won't!"

(V.S Ramachandran, quoted in "Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 231 )

However, it is quite possible that the Libertarian doesn't need to appeal to "free won't" to avoid the conclusion that free won't doesn't exist.

Libet tells when the RP occurs using electrodes. But how does Libet he when conscious decision-making occurs ? He relies on the subject reporting the position of the hand of a clock. But, as Dennett points out, this is only a report of where it seems to the subject that various things come together, not of the objective time at which they occur.

Suppose Libet knows that your readiness potential peaked at second 6,810 of the experimental trial, and the clock dot was straight down (which is what you reported you saw) at millisecond 7,005. How many milliseconds should he have to add to this number to get the time you were conscious of it? The light gets from your clock face to your eyeball almost instantaneously, but the path of the signals from retina through lateral geniculate nucleus to striate cortex takes 5 to 10 milliseonds -- a paltry fraction of the 300 milliseconds offset, but how much longer does it take them to get to you. (Or are you located in the striate cortex?) The visual signals have to be processed before they arrive at wherever they need to arrive for you to make a conscious decision of simultaneity. Libet's method presupposes, in short, that we can locate the intersection of two trajectories: # the rising-to-consciousness of signals representing the decision to flick # the rising to consciousness of signals representing successive clock-face orientations so that these events occur side-by-side as it were in place where their simultaneity can be noted.

("Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 231 )

Dennett refers to an experiment in which Churchland showed, that just pressing a button when asked to signal when you see a flash of light takes a normal subject about 350 milliseconds.

Does that mean that all actions taking longer than that are unconcsious ?

The brain processes stimuli over time, and the amount of time depends on which information is being extracted for which purposes. A top tennis player can set up to design a return of service within 100 milliseconds or so. The 78 feet from base line to base line can be traversed by a serve from Venus Williams [...] in less than 450 milliseconds [...] And since the precise timing and shape of that return depends critically on visual information and put it to highly appropriate use in that short a time. As Churchland showed, just pressing a button when asked to signal when you see a flash of light takes a normal subject about 350 milliseconds.

("Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 238 )

Our lives are full of decisions to act when the time is ripe, revisable commitments to policies, and attitudes that will shape responses that must be executed top swiftly to be reflectively considered in the light of actions.

("Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 239 )

The timing tricks usually fit together seamlessly and are incorporated into the brain's own monitoring of what it is up to, but in artificial circumstances (as set up by clever experimenters) the tricks can be exposed.

("Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 239 )

It is important to separate the idea that of an action being done (or not) by you, being consciously done (or not) by you, and the being done (or not) by you at a moment in time. The Tennis player who reacts too quickly to have made a conscious decision is reacting too quickly to have made a decision at that time. On the other hand, their decisions is not unwelcome or unexpected. It feels like their decision. And why should it not when it is the outcome of long practice, practice of the kind that is necessary to fulfill any tasks that requires precise timing, such as sport or music. The consciousness of the decision comes from the consncious decision to train oneself to react in a certain way. The consciousness of the act is stored, and pre-prepared, and using it we can perform feats where Libet's 300m sec. delay would be quite unacceptable.

One thing going for this hypothesis is that such judgments of simultaneity are unnatural acts in the first place, unless they are framed for a particular purpose, such as your trying to get your staccato attack in sync with the conductor's downbeat, or trying to connect with a low fastball so a to send it straight back over the pitcher's head.

("Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 235 )

Dennett's idea of "stored" conscious volition is quite in line with our theory. Indeed, we would like to extend it in a way that Dennett does not. We would like to extend it to stored indeterminism. Any decision we make in exigent situations where we do not have the luxury of considered thought must be more-or-less deterministic -- must be more-or-less determined by our state of mind at the time - -if they are to be of any use at all to us. Otherwise we might as well toss a coin. But our state of mind at the time can be formed by rumination, training and so over a long period, perhaps over a lifetime. As such it can contain elements of indeterminism in the positive sense -- of imagination and creativity, not mere caprice.

This extension of Dennett's criticism of Libet (or rather the way Libet's results are used by free-will sceptics) gives us a way of answering Dennett's own criticisms of Robert Kane, a prominent defender of naturalistic Free Will. PDJ 14/9/06

 

[moving finger]

Hi Tournesol

If there is no ultimate responsibiity (as defined by kane and myself), then it makes no sense to punish the shooter and not the gun -- they are both causally repsonsible.
Is that the conclusion you wish to draw ?

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of punishment. It makes no sense to punish anything if all we seek is “revenge” (whether UR exists or not). The only meaningful purpose of punishment is to act deterministically to influence future behaviour. Punishing a “gun” will not affect the future behaviour of the gun, but punishing a person may affect the future behaviour of the person (or of similar people), regardless of UR. Punishment thus has absolutely nothing to do with UR.

How fortunate that I have written an elaborate defence of UR, isntead of just
saying that I believ in it.

You have failed to show that UR is coherent, you have failed to show that your definition of free will entails UR, you have failed to show that your so-called Darwinian model possesses UR. Is this what you call an elaborate defence?

Compatiblists think people are responsible for their actions. You, apparently, don't. Unless you mean
something different from Kane and myself by "UR"

You again are confusing responsibility simpliciter with ultimate responsibility. I believe people are responsible simpliciter for their actions, as do compatibilists. But ultimate responsibility is an incoherent notion.

Huh ? Did you mean to write that ?

Yes.

Why not ?

Because UR entails infinite regress.

People can't have responsibility
attributed to them unless they already have had responsibility attributed to them ? That barely
makes sense.

You are confusing UR and responsibility simpliciter again.

UR isn't a thing that is created like bile in the bile duct. We hold agents repsonsible, and
may or may not propose mechanism that justiy that nonarbitrarily.

You are confusing UR and responsibility simpliciter again.
Falling tiles were “responsible” for the Columbia shuttle disaster, but we woild not claim the tiles possessed UR.

It is only UR if it is something more that causal responsibility.

What “more”? Randomness?

The objective mechanism for UR is of course the RIG/SIS mechanism.

The RIG/SIS does not give rise to UR.

Discussed here:

This does not show that UR is present

It posits soemthing close to that. It certainly doesn't posit that reptiles can give
brith to mammals.

It posits neither.

The parents of a mammal must be more-or-less mammalian,
and to be a responsible agent, you must be able to more-or-less exert control over your future
state of mind.

The analogy is false.
If I am not UR, at least partially, for the antecedent state N-1 which leads to state N, then I cannot be UR, even partially, for state N (even Kane agrees with this). A little bit of thinking will show you this leads to infinite regress.

You are evading the point. I have shown how my theory does not incur infinite regresses.

You are the one evading the point – you have not shown how your theory or model gives rise to UR. You simply claim that it does, without evidence.

which is a regress...but not an infinite one. Only infintie regresses are problemantic.

Show how the regress can be terminated.

It tapers off

It never reaches zero, which is the whole point. You cannot generate partial UR from zero UR.

The same way Prime Mammals are, as I have pointed out several times.

Which is a false analogy, as I have pointed out several times. A false analogy proves absolutely nothing. The precise point at which mammals first arose in the animal kingdom is an arbitrary point that would have to be decided using subjective human judgement, there is no objective basis for determining this point. Are you saying the same for your UR?

Best Regards

 

[moving finger]

Hi Tournesol

As usual, we are repeating the same things over and over again. It seems we are failing to communicate. I see no point in repeating the same old arguments again and again, hence have abbreviated my response.

The fact that you are not in control-of-your-control does not mean
that someone else is. It just means the process of control is a "at a least partial" "more or less"
thing.

Wrong. Your "control" must follow some algorithm. Either you created the algorithm (ie you are in control of your control), or the algorithm was somehow created "for you", outside of your control (ie it was either created by someone else, by something else, or has simply an indeterministic cause). If the algorithm for your control was somehow created "for you" outside of your control then how can you possibly claim to have ultimate control? The only way you can claim ultimate control over your actions is if indeed you have control over your control over your control ad infinituum. It's exactly the same problem as with UR.

But it would be a very fancy theromometer. AI researchers
have been chasing human-style rationallity for decades.

A simple machine which behaves rationally yet not completely predictably would in fact be very easy to construct. That machine could operate in the same way as your RIG/SIS. But nobody (apart perhaps from yourself) would claim that such a simple machine possesed UR.

I am assuming people are responsible for their actions.

Confusing UR with responsibility simpliciter again

Indeterminism entails Causal Originative Power, which is one of the
two components of the mechanism for UR. The other is rationallity which is also given in the definition.

How can I be held responsible for something which is indeterministic hence not under my control?

Yes it does, in the same way that "at least partly mammalian" does?

That false analogy again.

To be repsonsible is not the same as being causally responsible.

Direct causal responsibility is not required, I agree, but there must be at least some unbroken indirect chain of cause and effect over which I have control, otherwise I cannot possibly be reasonably held responsible.

How can I be responsible for some X unless I have at least some causal influence over whether X occurs or not?

Perhaps you could give an example where an agent can reasonably be held responsible for an event X when there is absolutely no possibility of a causal relationship between the agent and the causally antecedent states of event X?

But my theory isn't the same ans Kane's!

Your “theory” contains the same kinds of fundamental errors as Kane’s (ie it assumes UR arises from nothing, without showing exactly and coherently how this is supposed to work)

Best Regards

 

[moving finger]

Hi Tournesol

Lots of words, but you still have not addressed the fundamental problem : You have not shown how UR can “switch on” within an agent if UR is totally absent at some point in the agent’s antecedent states. The RIG/SIS certainly does not create UR. Your claim to UR is therefore based on unsubstantiated belief – ie faith – and not reason.

1. Libertarian responsibility does not arise out of nothing, it arises out of semicompatibilist responsibility.

Semicompatibilist responsibility does not entail UR, but libertarian responsibility does entail UR. You have not shown how we can go from “no UR” to “UR” (you simply claim, or assume, that it can somehow come about, presumably via some supernatural mechanism?)

2. There is no requirement that every intentional state is brought about 100% intentionally by the preceding state.

But there IS a requirement that I must be at least partially UR for each intentional state in the string of states – UR cannot “switch on” if UR is totally absent in antecedent states.

Best Regards