Prior will is no more free of antecedents and inner necessitation than is current will or future will.
Fortunately, no one ever needs to be free of prior causes in order to be the meaningful and relevant cause of what they do next.
Yet what they do next is fixed, not chosen by free will, but set by antecedents in the form of inner necessitation.
''Der Mensch kann zwar tun, was er will, aber er kann nicht wollen, was er will - A man can do what he wants, but not choose or select what he wants'' - Schopenhauer.
Nor is will the orchestrator of decision making.
The will of the customers to have dinner in the restaurant is what causes them to pick up the menu, review the menu, consider specific options, and make their choice.
Did you think that will was something else? Perhaps a sprite or spirit floating in the air?
The will of the customer is determined by life and the world. The will of the customer is fixed by antecedents. The customer has only one possible action in any given situation, not the willed action, but the determined action.
''Each state of the universe and its events are the necessary result of its prior state and prior events.'' - Marvin Edwards.
The brain generates the will to act based on needs and wants
There, that wasn't so hard. Now, consider the fact that after the brain generates the will to have dinner in the restaurant, that product of the brain then becomes the input to subsequent brain activity, like reading the menu and making a choice.
We don't choose our needs or wants. They develop within our system regardless of our will;
“It might be true that you would have done otherwise if you had wanted, though it is determined that you did not, in fact, want otherwise.” - Robert Kane
which are determined by countless factors, circumstances, needs, wants, fears...
Yes, but only the factors that still remain within us, after those prior events have passed, get to participate in our choice. No prior cause of us can participate in our decision without first becoming an integral part of who and what we are. Result: It is actually us, in the here and now, that is making the decision.
That there are factors within us that determine our behaviour doesn't mean that we chose our condition, or that we can do otherwise.
Will emerges relatively late in the process. First inputs, then propagation, then processing of information, integrating with memory function enabling recognition (milliseconds), etc, etc....
No, that doesn't hold up. Will, whether conscious or unconscious, motivates and directs subsequent conscious or unconscious brain activity. For example, the conscious will to have dinner at the restaurant results in the unconscious activity of the motor cortex as it lifts our legs and shifts our weight such that we walk through the restaurant's door.
Information acquisition and processing precedes both unconscious and conscious will, and determines what is thought, felt and done.
Neural networks function according to their makeup and wiring, not their will. It's a biological mechanism, not a free will agency.
Yet it is specifically the state of the system, not will, that decides in any given instance.
Will is a part of the state of the system which is us. The choosing process, also a part of the state of the system which is us, determines our deliberate will.
Will comes after information acquisition and processing. That is the agency. The brain is an information processor.
What we imagine is not necessarily what we in fact do. What we imagine also has antecedents.
Correct on both counts.
With the related consequences for the idea of free will.
That is causal necessitation at work.
Causal necessitation does no work. Causal necessitation is about what the objects and forces that actually do the work are doing. For example, it is our own brain that is doing the work of choosing, in a reliable and deterministic manner.
Causal necessitation refers to the system, its makeup, state and function. Synapses, dendrites, axons, signals between cells and regions, inputs from organs and senses, memory input and integration in relation to the external world; determining how we think, what we think and what we do....
The brain shapes and forms our conscious experience on the basis of information acquired and memory function by means of neural activity.
Yes, but also keep in mind that the brain is also having that conscious experience.
Sure, the brain is producing the conscious experience based on its underlying information processing activity, of which consciousness is blissfully unaware.
Memory function failure alone disintegrates consciousness.
I don't think so. We have immediate conscious experience of sensory information, even if we immediately forget it. We have long term and short term memory working separately, such that a person can lose short term memory of what just happened but can recount events from long ago, and we also have the loss of long term memory where short term memory still functions fine (for the few minutes that it lasts).
The consequences of the loss of memory function is well documented.
Yes, there are different memory functions, biographical, episodic, short term, long term, etc....and the point is that whatever form of memory function is lost, the consequences are related to that function.
It can get to the point where the patient no longer recognizes family, friends, themselves or common objects in the environment and consciousness is reduced to incomprehensible shapes and movements.
Neutral? It determines the very state of the system, the world, the brain, thought and action.
Well, no. Causal necessity itself causes nothing and necessitates nothing. And the fact of reliable causation, from which we logically derive causal necessity, is always true, whether it rains or shines, so it is a neutral notion.
''Causal necessity'' just refers to how the system works, its elements and how they interact deterministically.
