Compatibilism: What's that About?

[Jarhyn]

.

You seem to be speaking against the same dualistic nonsense that DBT is: I don't give a shit about nonsensical libertarian free will. I'm a compatibilist.

The sad part is that you have not understood a word I said. Nothing I have said supports dualism. Just the opposite.

If you don't understand what is being said, just ask. Stop making assumptions that suit your own needs and misrepresent your opponent.

The sad part is that you have not understood a word I said.

I bolded it so you can understand it perhaps a bit better.

Nothing you have said supports dualism and I never said that you ever did. Quite the opposite: you attack dualism.

The thing is attacking dualism does not attack compatibilist free will. Compatibilist free will does not rely on dualism.

If you don't understand what is being said, just ask. Stop making assumptions that suit your own needs and misrepresenting your "opponent".

And let's be clear here, I do not feel you are an opponent. I merely know you are wrong and preaching wrongness and I would like to help you be less wrong.

 

[pood]

.

You seem to be speaking against the same dualistic nonsense that DBT is: I don't give a shit about nonsensical libertarian free will. I'm a compatibilist.

The sad part is that you have not understood a word I said. Nothing I have said supports dualism. Just the opposite.

Of course you don’t support dualism. But here is what you wrote in the other thread:

BS. I am supporting the proposition that it is the state of the brain, neural architecture, state and condition, that determines behaviour, not free will.

Of course, if you are not a dualist, then you realize that I AM my brain. And that means that I AM my neural architecture, state and condition.


And, since you are not a dualist, but given your own words quoted above, we can recast those words to the simpler formulation, viz.

I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior, not free will.

And, with your own words, your have supplied a reductio of your hard determinism! If “I” determine my behavior, that just IS (compatibilist) free will! So your quote logically reduces to:

I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior.

Welcome to compatibilism, DBT!

 

[DBT]

.

You seem to be speaking against the same dualistic nonsense that DBT is: I don't give a shit about nonsensical libertarian free will. I'm a compatibilist.

The sad part is that you have not understood a word I said. Nothing I have said supports dualism. Just the opposite.

Of course you don’t support dualism. But here is what you wrote in the other thread:

BS. I am supporting the proposition that it is the state of the brain, neural architecture, state and condition, that determines behaviour, not free will.

Of course, if you are not a dualist, then you realize that I AM my brain. And that means that I AM my neural architecture, state and condition.


And, since you are not a dualist, but given your own words quoted above, we can recast those words to the simpler formulation, viz.

I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior, not free will.

And, with your own words, your have supplied a reductio of your hard determinism! If “I” determine my behavior, that just IS (compatibilist) free will! So your quote logically reduces to:

I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior.

Welcome to compatibilism, DBT!

Talk about creative interpretation!

Then again, creative interpretation and careful wording is the very essence of compatibilism.

The brain is the agency of response, therefore free will, is a far cry from proving free will. Careful wording and creative interpretation doesn't prove the proposition.

That takes neuroscience: how the brain works, how decisions are made and actions taken.

 

[Jarhyn]

.

You seem to be speaking against the same dualistic nonsense that DBT is: I don't give a shit about nonsensical libertarian free will. I'm a compatibilist.

The sad part is that you have not understood a word I said. Nothing I have said supports dualism. Just the opposite.

Of course you don’t support dualism. But here is what you wrote in the other thread:

BS. I am supporting the proposition that it is the state of the brain, neural architecture, state and condition, that determines behaviour, not free will.

Of course, if you are not a dualist, then you realize that I AM my brain. And that means that I AM my neural architecture, state and condition.


And, since you are not a dualist, but given your own words quoted above, we can recast those words to the simpler formulation, viz.

I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior, not free will.

And, with your own words, your have supplied a reductio of your hard determinism! If “I” determine my behavior, that just IS (compatibilist) free will! So your quote logically reduces to:

I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior.

Welcome to compatibilism, DBT!

Talk about creative interpretation!

Then again, creative interpretation and careful wording is the very essence of compatibilism.

The brain is the agency of response, therefore free will, is a far cry from proving free will. Careful wording and creative interpretation doesn't prove the proposition.

That takes neuroscience: how the brain works, how decisions are made and actions taken.

And I keep explaining to you that neuroscience is not what gets you there, either. You need: a few entry level SW courses, an assembly language course, a machine architecture course, a course on basic ML and a course on HTMs.

You need to understand a neuron well enough to create an artificial one, and then to understand the behavior of neurons in concert well enough to understand how they give rise to the expression of algorithms based on the field of their connection biases.

Then you might understand how a choice function can be implemented in neural media.

But none of that is necessary to show real examples of active choice functions in machines.

 

[pood]

.

You seem to be speaking against the same dualistic nonsense that DBT is: I don't give a shit about nonsensical libertarian free will. I'm a compatibilist.

The sad part is that you have not understood a word I said. Nothing I have said supports dualism. Just the opposite.

Of course you don’t support dualism. But here is what you wrote in the other thread:

BS. I am supporting the proposition that it is the state of the brain, neural architecture, state and condition, that determines behaviour, not free will.

Of course, if you are not a dualist, then you realize that I AM my brain. And that means that I AM my neural architecture, state and condition.


And, since you are not a dualist, but given your own words quoted above, we can recast those words to the simpler formulation, viz.

I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior, not free will.

And, with your own words, your have supplied a reductio of your hard determinism! If “I” determine my behavior, that just IS (compatibilist) free will! So your quote logically reduces to:

I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior.

Welcome to compatibilism, DBT!

Talk about creative interpretation!

Then again, creative interpretation and careful wording is the very essence of compatibilism.

The brain is the agency of response, therefore free will, is a far cry from proving free will.

It’s a far cry from proving libertarian free will, which no one here supports!

You agree: I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior.

You HAVE to agree with that, given your own quoted words, and the fact that you are NOT a dualist!

Once again, welcome to compatibilism!

 

[Jarhyn]

.

You seem to be speaking against the same dualistic nonsense that DBT is: I don't give a shit about nonsensical libertarian free will. I'm a compatibilist.

The sad part is that you have not understood a word I said. Nothing I have said supports dualism. Just the opposite.

Of course you don’t support dualism. But here is what you wrote in the other thread:

BS. I am supporting the proposition that it is the state of the brain, neural architecture, state and condition, that determines behaviour, not free will.

Of course, if you are not a dualist, then you realize that I AM my brain. And that means that I AM my neural architecture, state and condition.


And, since you are not a dualist, but given your own words quoted above, we can recast those words to the simpler formulation, viz.

I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior, not free will.

And, with your own words, your have supplied a reductio of your hard determinism! If “I” determine my behavior, that just IS (compatibilist) free will! So your quote logically reduces to:

I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior.

Welcome to compatibilism, DBT!

Talk about creative interpretation!

Then again, creative interpretation and careful wording is the very essence of compatibilism.

The brain is the agency of response, therefore free will, is a far cry from proving free will.

It’s a far cry from proving libertarian free will, which no one here supports!

You agree: I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior.

You HAVE to agree with that, given your own quoted words, and the fact that you are NOT a dualist!

Once again, welcome to compatibilism!

The problem is that if such things as "I determine my behavior", then "someone determined someone's behavior" and the idea that people don't have choice is likely the only thing keeping them from falling into the existential crisis of someone chose to do some bad thing.

Regardless of whether that's because the human so denying free choice is a sociopath who does not want to come to terms that they choose to do evil things, or a person hurt by a sociopath that does not want to come to terms with humans choosing to do evil things, usually I find this is the core of such a belief.

You won't pierce that under decades of justification and existential angst.

In many ways the belief one has free will creates a Tinkerbell effect, in that to believe one does not is to fully accede free will and all choice blindly to (who the fuck even knows) in exchange for peace.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Yet what they do next is fixed, not chosen by free will, but set by antecedents in the form of inner necessitation.

First, choosing is the antecedent inner process that necessitates the choice, which fixes the will. For any deliberate action, the final prior cause of the action is the act of deliberation.

Second, we presume a chain of perfectly reliable cause and effect, preceding the choosing, within the choosing, between the choosing and the action, and following upon the action. There is no break in the causal chain.

''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.

Dear Mr. Schopenhauer, a person chooses what they will do about their wants, needs, and desires. And that is what free will is about. It is about fixing our intention upon some specific action, whether it is deciding what we will have for breakfast or deciding how our property should be distributed after we die. That is what the "will" in free will is about: the intention to actually do something, whether we feel like doing it or not.

The will of the customer is determined by life and the world.

Lovely rhetoric but not at all realistic. Each person at the table will choose for themselves what they will order for dinner, without consulting with "life and the world" outside the restaurant.

The will of the customer is fixed by antecedents.

So, which of those antecedent events is the most meaningful and relevant prior cause, the big bang, or, the person's own choosing? Decide quickly, because the waiter needs to know who gets the bill for dinner.

The customer has only one possible action in any given situation, not the willed action, but the determined action.

The willed action IS the determined action. There is no difference. The choosing determined the will, and the goals and reasons for the choice determined the choosing, and the person's prior experiences determined the goals and reasons, and so forth and so on back to the big bang. But we only care about the choosing, because it is the most meaningful and relevant of all of the prior causes.

''Each state of the universe and its events are the necessary result of its prior state and prior events.'' - Marvin Edwards.

Thanks for continuing to quote me! Frankly, I think I have a better grasp of these issues than Schopenhauer. For example, I know the difference between a want and a 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

And that is why causal necessity can never make us do anything that we don't already want to do!

The logical fact of universal causal necessity/inevitability changes nothing. It is neither a meaningful nor a relevant constraint upon any freedom we have, least of all free will.

Information acquisition and processing precedes both unconscious and conscious will, and determines what is thought, felt and done.

My conscious choice to respond to your comment precedes and motivates all of the conscious and unconscious processes involved in my typing this right now. So, clearly you're mistaken.

Neural networks function according to their makeup and wiring, not their will. It's a biological mechanism, not a free will agency.

This particular biological mechanism has evolved a brain to which it refers choices involving imagination, evaluation, and choosing. The agency of choosing comes with the brain's mechanism.

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 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.

Exactly. And each of us happens to be a system with elements that interact deterministically in a way that presents itself to us as a person.

 

[rousseau]

.

You seem to be speaking against the same dualistic nonsense that DBT is: I don't give a shit about nonsensical libertarian free will. I'm a compatibilist.

The sad part is that you have not understood a word I said. Nothing I have said supports dualism. Just the opposite.

Of course you don’t support dualism. But here is what you wrote in the other thread:

BS. I am supporting the proposition that it is the state of the brain, neural architecture, state and condition, that determines behaviour, not free will.

Of course, if you are not a dualist, then you realize that I AM my brain. And that means that I AM my neural architecture, state and condition.


And, since you are not a dualist, but given your own words quoted above, we can recast those words to the simpler formulation, viz.

I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior, not free will.

And, with your own words, your have supplied a reductio of your hard determinism! If “I” determine my behavior, that just IS (compatibilist) free will! So your quote logically reduces to:

I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior.

Welcome to compatibilism, DBT!

Talk about creative interpretation!

Then again, creative interpretation and careful wording is the very essence of compatibilism.

The brain is the agency of response, therefore free will, is a far cry from proving free will. Careful wording and creative interpretation doesn't prove the proposition.

That takes neuroscience: how the brain works, how decisions are made and actions taken.

And I keep explaining to you that neuroscience is not what gets you there, either. You need: a few entry level SW courses, an assembly language course, a machine architecture course, a course on basic ML and a course on HTMs.

You need to understand a neuron well enough to create an artificial one, and then to understand the behavior of neurons in concert well enough to understand how they give rise to the expression of algorithms based on the field of their connection biases.

Then you might understand how a choice function can be implemented in neural media.

But none of that is necessary to show real examples of active choice functions in machines.

To me it looks like the arguments you and fromderinside are making are compatible with each other.

At a fundamental level, FDI is arguing that there is no centralized mover in the system, just a system that moves. If I'm understanding you correctly, you basically agree with this but choose to call it free will, while fromderinside doesn't.

fromderinside uses the lack of a centralized mover to conclude that will doesn't exist - which is true according to his definition of will. While you define the system as one that operates, making your definition of will true as well

I agree with the congruence of these two thoughts. We are a system that operates which will always land on one outcome. We can choose otherwise but what makes that so isn't that the next choice wasn't inevitable, but that the human body operates in an environment where it's free to act out a range of activity. We can choose otherwise because there are minimal constraints on our behavior - experientially we experience a feeling of freedom to choose. And in a way we are choosing, the brain activity happening is us.

The brain chooses - the choice it ended up making was inevitable - both of these things can be true.

 

[Jarhyn]

.

You seem to be speaking against the same dualistic nonsense that DBT is: I don't give a shit about nonsensical libertarian free will. I'm a compatibilist.

The sad part is that you have not understood a word I said. Nothing I have said supports dualism. Just the opposite.

Of course you don’t support dualism. But here is what you wrote in the other thread:

BS. I am supporting the proposition that it is the state of the brain, neural architecture, state and condition, that determines behaviour, not free will.

Of course, if you are not a dualist, then you realize that I AM my brain. And that means that I AM my neural architecture, state and condition.


And, since you are not a dualist, but given your own words quoted above, we can recast those words to the simpler formulation, viz.

I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior, not free will.

And, with your own words, your have supplied a reductio of your hard determinism! If “I” determine my behavior, that just IS (compatibilist) free will! So your quote logically reduces to:

I am supporting the proposition that I determine my behavior.

Welcome to compatibilism, DBT!

Talk about creative interpretation!

Then again, creative interpretation and careful wording is the very essence of compatibilism.

The brain is the agency of response, therefore free will, is a far cry from proving free will. Careful wording and creative interpretation doesn't prove the proposition.

That takes neuroscience: how the brain works, how decisions are made and actions taken.

And I keep explaining to you that neuroscience is not what gets you there, either. You need: a few entry level SW courses, an assembly language course, a machine architecture course, a course on basic ML and a course on HTMs.

You need to understand a neuron well enough to create an artificial one, and then to understand the behavior of neurons in concert well enough to understand how they give rise to the expression of algorithms based on the field of their connection biases.

Then you might understand how a choice function can be implemented in neural media.

But none of that is necessary to show real examples of active choice functions in machines.

To me it looks like the arguments you and fromderinside are making are compatible with each other.

At a fundamental level, FDI is arguing that there is no centralized mover in the system, just a system that moves. If I'm understanding you correctly, you basically agree with this but choose to call it free will, while fromderinside doesn't.

fromderinside uses the lack of a centralized mover to conclude that will doesn't exist - which is true according to his definition of will. While you define the system as one that operates, making your definition of will true as well

I agree with the congruence of these two thoughts. We are a system that operates which will always land on one outcome. We can choose otherwise but what makes that so isn't that the next choice wasn't inevitable, but that the human body operates in an environment where it's free to act out a range of activity. We can choose otherwise because there are minimal constraints on our behavior - experientially we experience a feeling of freedom to choose. And in a way we are choosing, the brain activity happening is us.

The brain chooses - the choice it ended up making was inevitable - both of these things can be true.

No? There are, in any given event, "central movers".

To understand this one needs to understand just a single neuron, in relation to many other neurons:

This neuron has a bias value. In meat neurons it's a bit more messy on the activation curve and result, but essentially this bias value determines how many of the "many other neurons" it takes to "activate" the neuron, to make it output a "1".

If enough of the neurons "above" that one have activated, the input will exceed the bias, and it will fire.

The most simple "central mover" here is the bias.

There are other parts to the geometry of the neuron: it's connection weights, Its refractory period, it's refractory radius, it's refractory weight.

Some nifty switching can happen in the domain of local refractory behaviors, too, but it takes about a week to align myself on that math and I have no cause to right now.

But moreover, it ends up coming together in process that something IN that process does to itself modifies the process itself. At some level there is an executive loop, but fuck if I know where it is or how it's shaped, and fuck if I would tell anyone if I did. Pointing out the location and nature of the soul is dangerous.

 

[DBT]

Will exists. Will, being necessitated, simply cannot be described as "free." Will does precisely what is determined by the workings of the brain (not open to choice), nothing more, nothing less.

We have will. Will plays its role, but will is not "free" - which essentially means the absence of necessitation, coersion or force.

As determinism is essentially necessitation, the idea of free will is not compatible with determinism.

 

[fromderinside]

I'm just as sure that what we think the mind does is all wrong and will be proven so in the near future.

I'm absolutely certain that you are quite wrong about how the mind functions on account of the fact that you never actually studied how the mind functions. Rather, you studied about how certain neurons function in a certain situation and only a small part of that.

If you wish to understand how minds function, this is already deeply studied and well understood to the point where we assemble the things minds are made logically of to create minds artificially.

OOOh. You just make me so ....

My first Job was as a Fire Control Technician (guns and missals) which, at my time of service was supported by study and application of analog computers.

I followed that with a position at IBM as a Engineering technician on digital computers and periphery.

My ten years in Academia was entirely in Psychology and Biology where I specialized in Clinical, Statistical, human and animal neuroscience, psychophysics, psychometrics, anthropology, and ecology.

I wrote the programs for my masters experiment, a auditory temporal resolution study, and dissertation, an auditory frequency signal movement experiment. I finished at CIT in James Olds lab.

After educating I spent 6 years as a civil servant leading a Dept. of Navy SSSA teams testing, evaluating, and supporting Electronic Warfare A/C and Air superiority A/C.

Following that I spent 20 years Principal Scientist at MDC/Boeing in Long Beach designing, testing, building Flight Deck Human control and operations systems and adding Human Support technologies for aircraft assembly and test systems and robots.

I shared design and concept with my best mate, a Mathematician turned computer software designer who applied some to developing state of the art CAD systems.

And my main competition was an AI guy who admitted Aerospace psychologist developed operational lists were better than AI solutions as they were in the nineties.

But, yeah, I need to keep up now that I'm retired 20 years.

Steam released.

Do you look like a black pot yet? Hell, are behind your ears dry yet?

 

[Jarhyn]

I'm just as sure that what we think the mind does is all wrong and will be proven so in the near future.

I'm absolutely certain that you are quite wrong about how the mind functions on account of the fact that you never actually studied how the mind functions. Rather, you studied about how certain neurons function in a certain situation and only a small part of that.

If you wish to understand how minds function, this is already deeply studied and well understood to the point where we assemble the things minds are made logically of to create minds artificially.

I keep telling DBT this might as well tell you: if you wish to study what the mind does, you need a few courses on basic programming, linear algebra, machine architecture, assembly language, Machine Learning and HTMs.

I wrote the programs for my master experiment and dissertation experiment. My first Job was as a Fire Control Technician (guns and missals) which, at my time of service supported by study and application of analog computers. I followed that with a position at IBM as a Engineering technician on digital computers and periphery,

My ten years in Academia was entirely in Psychology where I specialized in Clinical, Statistical, human and animal neuroscience, psychophysics, and psychometrics.

After which I spent 6 years as a civil servant leading SSSA teams testing, evaluating, and supporting Electronic Warfare A/C and Air superiority A/C.

Following that I spent 20 years as lead scientist at MDC/Boeing in Long Beach designing, testing, building Flight Deck Human control and operations systems and adding Human Support technologies for aircraft assembly and test systems and robots.

My best mate was Mathematician turned computer software designer who worked developing state of the art CAD systems.

And my main competition was an AI guy who admitted Aerospace psychologist developed operational lists were better than AI solutions as they were in the nineties.

But, yeah, I need to keep up now that I'm retired 20 years.

Do you look like a black pot yet? Hell, are behind your ears dry yet?

So, you retired a decade before machine learning was even a major field, before HTMs were even an understood thing.

I got my degree a decade after you retired. Heirarchical Temporal Memories were newish even then. Better HTM systems have only been developed in the last 7 years.

Think about how much you have failed to keep up on.

Apparently, you didn't keep up on machine learning.

You should feel no shame in that, but you are the one here denying that choice function and chained interpretation are outside the bounds for metal, let alone meat (which can do all the things the metal can and then a lot more), and further you are denying that the choice function is local to the metal, and that targeting and target selection is an objectively observable choice function. You who claimed to work on targeting systems. Makes me wonder what kind of wrench turner you were.

All in all, AI was kinda shit in the 90's.

 

[fromderinside]

So, you retired a decade before machine learning was even a major field, before HTMs were even an understood thing.

I got my degree a decade after you retired. Heirarchical Temporal Memories were newish even then. Better HTM systems have only been developed in the last 7 years.

Think about how much you have failed to keep up on.

Apparently, you didn't keep up on machine learning.

You should feel no shame in that, but you are the one here denying that choice function and chained interpretation are outside the bounds for metal, let alone meat (which can do all the things the metal can and then a lot more), and further you are denying that the choice function is local to the metal, and that targeting and target selection is an objectively observable choice function. You who claimed to work on targeting systems. Makes me wonder what kind of wrench turner you were.

All in all, AI was kinda shit in the 90's.

Columnar organization was described in 1957. (https://journals.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/jn.1957.20.4.408

Organizing principles were studies and theories were constructed from that time forward.

HTM is an AI construct that attempts to find analogs in observed neuroanatomy and brain function. HTM is not derived from brain function nor does not reflect how the brain works. For you to make that claim you'd have to be able to model actual brain function, cortex, midbrain, wherever.

 Hierarchical Temporal Memory

An HTM attempts to model a portion of the cortex's learning and plasticity as described above. Differences between HTMs and neurons include:[16]

• strictly binary signals and synapses
• no direct inhibition of synapses or dendrites (but simulated indirectly)
• currently only models layers 2/3 and 4 (no 5 or 6)
• no "motor" control (layer 5)
• no feed-back between regions (layer 6 of high to layer 1 of low)

In other words keep your enthusiasm at a realistic level as do such as the Wiki article.

Things move much more slowly than you think. Take note of my 1957 reference and the 2004 HTM reference as an index of just how slow.

Your laziness with subjective proclamations for objective aspect is noted. Again.

 

[DBT]

A fine example of a poor understanding of determinism

That has nothing to do with "determinism". This is just "systems in general".

All the objects and events within the system enact changes within the system

But they don't all enact changes the same time. Some changes are limited to the speed of light in their propagation. Some of those changes are much much slower.

Nobody said they do. It's irrelevant.

The photons that leave our star started the process millions of years ago, and take seven whole minutes to reach us.

The point is that we are locally constrained. Discussing global properties does not even touch on local properties. The local properties merely have to be compatible with the global ones.

Just like "the picture has an average color of red" does not discount the ability of a single pixel to be blue. Or, "the screen is flat teal" does not conflict with "that subpixel is blue".

Your view of the global property is also itself wrong, insofar as the universe itself has that whole "randomness" thing going on underneath the easily available layers of deterministic-seeming shit.

The overall system determinancy does not matter to US insofar as we cannot hold that, so we cannot operate deterministically: we are stochastic operators in a (maybe) deterministic system.

Compatibilist free will exists within the context of our stochastic operations and strategies. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem explains why all local entities within all systems, deterministic or not, are limited at best to stochastic behavioral modelling.

Compatibilist free will is not like global libertarian free will. It exists precisely because of what we cannot know, and we cannot know it on account of Incompleteness.

You might understand some of these things if you took any of those courses I keep encouraging you to take.

It's not I who should take a course. I suggest that you begin with basic comprehension. I could explain why, but I suspect that you would misconstrue my explanation.

 

[DBT]

That if a system is deterministic, it is the state of the system that determines outcomes and free will plays no part in what happens. It plays no part because it doesn't exist.

Free will is an empirical event in which a person decides for themselves what they will do while free of coercion and other forms of undue influence. It is objectively observed in the real world as a real event. The example I've offered, of people walking into a restaurant, browsing the menu, and placing their orders is proof that such events are both real and quite common.

Decision making is a process by which a course of action is determined through an interaction of information within the neural networks of a brain.

This has nothing to do with free will.

The label misrepresents the nature, mechanisms and means of decision decision making.

The claim that free will is not real is only supported by rhetorical claims and strawman definitions. For example, it is claimed that free will must be free of prior causes, free of causal necessity, free of determinism, free of our own brains, free of our genetic makeup, free of our prior experiences, etc. Hard determinists know that these are all impossible freedoms, and therefore they cannot be the meaningful definitions of anything.

It is only necessary that our choice is caused by us, by our own goals and reasons, by our own thoughts and feelings, etc. The only thing free will must be free of is coercion and undue influence.

Compatibilist free will is a carefully constructed label, a purely semantic argument that does not relate to cognition.

But is not just us. The system is the whole world, the environment, our species, our genes, our culture, society, social conditioning, etc, etc.

Well, no. It was just a few of us at the table in the restaurant. It was not a world-wide event. And, my species, my genes, my culture, my social conditioning, are now just me, sitting at the restaurant table, deciding what I will have for dinner.

The world is always present in the conditions of the present moment. Everything that came before brings us to this moment;

''Each state of the universe and its events are the necessary result of its prior state and prior events. ("Events" change the state of things.) Determinism means that events will proceed naturally (as if "fixed as a matter of natural law") and reliably ("without deviation"). - Marvin Edwards.

What we choose is determined by the circumstances we are in, the options being presented, the state of our brain and mind, which within a determined system only allows one action to be realized in any particular circumstance: not the action chosen through the mythical power of free will, but the determined action.

And I chose the circumstances by deciding to join my friends for dinner in the restaurant. The number of options on the menu was sufficient to give me a broad range of choices. The state of my brain and mind was entirely me, of course. And I required no "mythical powers" to decide for myself what I would order for dinner. All the power required came with the brain, and the brain came with me.

Being born in a place, culture, time, to a family (genes, etc) and society not of your choosing, it is largely circumstances that choose you.

That you ended up in a restaurant for dinner involved a range of circumstances, which I;m sure you understand. Everything that has makeup and properties acts according to its makeup and properties, which is entirely 'it' or 'me.'

If you choose the salad and time could be re-wound and replayed, it would always be the salad. Replayed a million times over, always the salad.

Yes. On every replay it would always be the salad. And, on every replay, it would once again be possible to order the steak instead. And, although I could order the steak, I wouldn't.

If salad is determined, steak is never a possibility. If determined and replayed over and over, just like a movie, it's salad each and every time for eternity.

 

[DBT]

in the form of inner necessitation

So, in the form of "will"

A man can do what he wants, but not choose or select what he wants

And then Schopenhauer was wrong.

No, he wasn't. It's you who is wrong. You are wrong because it appears that in spite of giving a reasonable definition of determinism, you don't understand the implications of your definition or the nature of determinism.


If determinism is true, what happens within the brain is fixed by an interaction of information prior to conscious representation.

Your will is set before you are aware of it.

Not being aware of what is happening in terms of neural information processing and being powerless to alter outcomes, your will is not free to change a thing....merely carry out whatever is determined.

I mean shit, if we couldn't change what we want, what the fuck do people advertise for?

Holy Mackerel, you really don't understand the basics, that information acting upon a system changes the system? This has been explained over and over and over....did you say something about taking a course?

 

[DBT]

BS. I am supporting the proposition that it is the state of the brain, neural architecture, state and condition, that determines behaviour, not free will.

Correct, except for the last clause after the final comma, “not free will.” Drop that final three-word clause, and you’re correct.

Since I AM my brain, it follows that “neural architecture, state and condition” that determines behavior is ME determining my behavior. That IS compatibilist free will.

Jarhyn is right, your real target is libertarian, not compatibilist, free will.

The libertarian and the hard determinist both essentially say that “I” must be free of “me” to have free will — a logical absurdity. The difference between the two is that the hard determinist correctly maintains that it is impossible for “I” to be free of “me,” whereas the libertarian incorrectly argues that “I” can be free of “me.”

The compatibilist comes along and simply points out that whereas the hard determinist is correct to say that “I” cannot be free of “me,” he is incorrect to hold that this precludes free will, for it only precludes the libertarian variety of it.

You don't get to choose your state and condition. Your state and condition 'chooses' you, your proclivities, thoughts and actions. The mere token of it being 'you' does not equate to free will. It has nothing to do with will (which has its role to play), yet alone woopy do 'free will,' no less.

 

[DBT]

Yet what they do next is fixed, not chosen by free will, but set by antecedents in the form of inner necessitation.

First, choosing is the antecedent inner process that necessitates the choice, which fixes the will. For any deliberate action, the final prior cause of the action is the act of deliberation.

Nope, decisions are determined by information exchange between cells, networks and regions and fed into the experience of deliberation while conscious thought is active. Thought form as the information is processed and reported in conscious form.

The agency is not conscious deliberation itself, but underlying unconscious information processing feeding the conscious experience with fully formed thoughts.

The illusion of conscious agency - as pointed out - is revealed when something goes wrong within the underlying system, connectivity, memory function, etc.

Second, we presume a chain of perfectly reliable cause and effect, preceding the choosing, within the choosing, between the choosing and the action, and following upon the action. There is no break in the causal chain.

That is true of everything in the universe or world that is deterministic. It may even be true for QM;

''Wave functions - the probability waves of quantum mechanics - evolve in time according to precise mathematical roles, such as the Schrodinger equation (or its more precise relativistic counterparts, such as the Klein-Gordan equation). This informs us that quantum determinism replaces Laplace's classical determinism Knowledge of the wave functions of all of the fundamental ingredients at some moment in time allows a ''vast enough'' [Laplace] intelligence to determine the wave functions at any prior or futures time.

Quantum determinism tells us that the probability that any particular event will occur at some chosen time in the future is fully determined by knowledge of the wave function at any prior time.

The probabilistic aspect of quantum mechanics significantly softens Laplacian determinism by shifting inevitability from outcome-likelihoods, but the latter are fully determined within the conventional framework of quantum theory.'' Brian Greene, page 341 ''The Elegant Universe''

''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.

Dear Mr. Schopenhauer, a person chooses what they will do about their wants, needs, and desires. And that is what free will is about. It is about fixing our intention upon some specific action, whether it is deciding what we will have for breakfast or deciding how our property should be distributed after we die. That is what the "will" in free will is about: the intention to actually do something, whether we feel like doing it or not.

“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

The will of the customer is determined by life and the world.

Lovely rhetoric but not at all realistic. Each person at the table will choose for themselves what they will order for dinner, without consulting with "life and the world" outside the restaurant.

Nothing happens in a vacuum. Each and every customer in the restaurant has antecedents;

''It is unimportant whether one's resolutions and preferences occur because an ''ingenious physiologist' has tampered with one's brain, whether they result from narcotics addiction, from 'hereditary factor, or indeed from nothing at all.' Ultimately the agent has no control over his cognitive states.

So even if the agent has strength, skill, endurance, opportunity, implements, and knowledge enough to engage in a variety of enterprises, still he lacks mastery over his basic attitudes and the decisions they produce. After all, we do not have occasion to choose our dominant proclivities.'' - Prof. Richard Taylor -Metaphysics.

The will of the customer is fixed by antecedents.

So, which of those antecedent events is the most meaningful and relevant prior cause, the big bang, or, the person's own choosing? Decide quickly, because the waiter needs to know who gets the bill for dinner.

Everything that has happened before brings you to this point and this action. There are no exclusions, clauses or exemptions.

''Each state of the universe and its events are the necessary result of its prior state and prior events. ("Events" change the state of things.) - Marvin Edwards.

''Causal necessity'' just refers to how the system works, its elements and how they interact deterministically.

Exactly. And each of us happens to be a system with elements that interact deterministically in a way that presents itself to us as a person.

Not only presents itself, but makes us who we are, what we do or do not like, enjoy, find meaningful, our thoughts, feelings and actions.

That is how determinism is defined.

 

[Jarhyn]

Columnar organization was described in 1957. (https://journals.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/jn.1957.20.4.408

Organizing principles were studies and theories were constructed from that time forward.

HTM is an AI construct that attempts to find analogs in observed neuroanatomy and brain function. HTM is not derived from brain function nor does not reflect how the brain works. For you to make that claim you'd have to be able to model actual brain function, cortex, midbrain, Llwherever.

HTMs are not specifically about columnar organization. They are about refractory period, which indicates that indeed you don't know what they are.

The reason they are important is because the advance happened around neural refractory period, not columnar organization.

It is these refractory periods, the temporal component of the neuron, that really brings it closer to human neural function. As it is, most teams developing this technology, are developing it by vigorously reverse engineering the human brain.

I don't need to reverse engineer a whole brain, though, for my points. I just need to prove: instructions, interpreters, and static analysis happen in machines built of switches, and show both machines are constructions of switches. I don't need to show how all the switches come together for both, just one or the other.

Then I need to show that the neurons in our head are capable of implementing all the switch types and then some. This is where HTMs come in, since the temporal component allows OR and NOT logics to arise, which are important for building more interesting systemic truth and state efficiently.

This is why you need to understand how neurons and meat can be observed as doing the same thing as the metal, once the basic pieces of free will are observed.

There are two issues here: first, "does determinism rule out free will?"

Well, computers certainly have all the pieces of compatibilist free will, just not generally automated all together.

Humans clearly have the ability to do anything the metal can and then some.

So, that eliminates your core premise.

Then you are just left with special pleading and no-true-scotsman.

Therefore because the metal implies compatibilist free will, as the meat is more capable than the metal, the meat has compatibilist free will.

 

[Jarhyn]

Nobody said they do. It's irrelevant.

The fact that the future is behind a horizon for us is certainly relevant.

It is exactly the horizons and limitations of our knowledge that are relevant to the fact that we are locally stochastic processing engines. That is entirely relevant to whether WE in our operation see "choices".

Once all that other shit of the past has conspired to condense in a single locality, it is not that other shit anymore, it is the locality, and the locality is where decision and choice happens. Because I am the thing, the locality, I say "I make the decision". Because I as the locality have a number of alternatives in the bin, I say "I have choices". Because I have in this same locality a process that can evaluate those decisions beyond their initial genesis, I can say "my will is free". Because I can transmit the plan for external analysis, I have done so objectively.

In our operation of seeing choices, we have to operate choice functions. Those choice function operations can be evaluated on their success criterion (re: unit test) outside of live execution meaning they are objectively capable of "evaluation of freedom to goal".

These are the requirements for compatibilist free will. Therefore compatibilist free will.

does not relate to cognition.

The core process of cognition does not relate to cognition? That's just silly.

At any rate, you seem to wish that humans are somehow fundamentally incapable of doing what a computer observably does, and what we observably do through such.

As Marvin is keen to point out, there are many things which I did not choose for myself, but when those things became a part of myself, only I myself choose on that basis. Because part of the things that become a part of myself are... From myself, it seems trivially true that the brain alters itself.

But moreover, I've made a machine that alters itself the way the brain does so I can absolutely attest to the fact the brain alters itself.

You have all the pieces you seem to demand, but I expect the real reason you don't want to accept that people have and make choices, even to be evil and do terrible things, is entirely separate from what you claim here as your basis for rejecting personal responsibility for personal decisionmaking.