Compatibilism: What's that About?

[Marvin Edwards]

Philosophizing without a knowledge of math and science. Math and scince exist in te brain as thoughts and concepts. That does not men tere is no semnatc difference between terms.

Random has a specific definition in proximity. The occurrence of one event does not affect the occurrence of the next evet, there is no correlation between random variables.

I did this stuff waaaayyy back when going through statistics. Just flip a coin or toss a die 100 times and write down the results.

It's hard to control the flip of a coin, but a professional knife thrower controls the number of revolutions sufficiently to assure that the point rather than the hilt hits the target.

The result of the coin toss will be reliably caused by the position of the thumb under the coin and the force applied. Then the inertia of the coin versus the air resistance. Then how it bounces on the surface where it lands. If you control all of these factors, perhaps by building a machine that flips the coin under controlled conditions, then the result of the coin toss cannot only be reliably predicted, but it can be reliably controlled. Oh, and the math and physics would be used to describe and calculate the effects at each stage.

Controlling the behavior of a quark is likely to be much more challenging. But, we may as well assume reliable causation even though we do not yet understand the rules that the quark is following.

Throwing a knife in a carnival at a human is not a random event. It is not a 'flip of the coin'.

Cup your hands and shake a coin, then open your hands and let it fall. Over 100 trials it will be close tp 50/50. Try it.

10 red balls and 90 blue balls are in a bucket. Pullo ne, put it back, shake the bucket and draw again. On the average the red balls will be picked 10% of the time and blue 90% of the time. This is called random sampling. Which color is pecked next is not predictable.

As to choosing salad or beef for dinner being a free choice, how are you conditioned by experience to make
that choice?

When you buy a car or shoes your 'free' choice is conditioned by advertising. Your choice is free in that it is not restricted, but I doubt any choice is made in a vacuum uncontained by experience. There is a subconscious aspect to all choices.

We are not disembodied consciousness unencumbered by experience and feelings, IOW we are not god.

I do not think free choice exists in any absolute sense. We are always limited by our brain biology.

Right, there is no such thing as absolute freedom.

 

[fromderinside]

Word twisting an argument does not make.

Much worse when such is being done in the name of philosophy.

Not funny.

Grotesques obviously.

Obviously you actually mean it when you say words are make ideas.

 

[fromderinside]

Interesting when you add objects to forces as causal when objects are the things determined by forces (laws of nature).

Obviously you can't make a legitimate argument ever. Always twisting always making up so what you want becomes in your mind what is.

It's not.

Your twisting of language only adds noise which is easily detected and corrected.

Please stop. Your doing so is making these threads worthless as instruments through which valuable useable information is revealed and codified.

 

[DBT]

Yes, choosing what we will do is a deterministic operation. However, determinism never actually determines anything. Only the objects and forces that make up the universe can cause events. Determinism is simply the belief that the objects and the forces behave reliably as they do so.

Not ''choosing'' what we do, but what we do. What we do not being a matter of possible alternatives or choice (what is possible for someone else is not necessarily possible for you). Choice implies the ability to do otherwise in any instance. No such possibility exists within a determined system. The objects and events of a determined system is the system. Nothing gets to act differently.

 

[DBT]

Who and what we are is not a meaningful constraint. If we were free from ourselves we would be someone else. So, freedom from "inner necessity", our own purposes and reasons, our own genetic dispositions and prior experiences, our own thoughts and feelings, our own beliefs and values, and all the other things that make us who and what we are, is impossible.

Because "freedom from causal necessity" and "freedom from ourselves" are absurdities, the notion of free will can never be assumed to imply either one.

Fortunately, free will does not imply either one. Free will means our choice was free from coercion and other forms of undue influence. Nothing more, and nothing less. Once we get that straight, the war between determinism and free will ends.

Who and what we are is shaped and formed by elements outside of our control. We have no say about our genetic makeup, who our parents are, the culture we were born into, our mental and physical attributes, etc, etc. They are our inescapable constraints. Being exposed to other cultures other languages, beliefs, expands who we are. Information acting upon our makeup changes us constantly, the you of a moment ago not being identical to the you now or the you in the moment to come.

Cognition;
''Every moment of the day your nervous system is active. It exchanges millions of signals corresponding with feeling, thoughts and actions. A simple example of how important the nervous system is in your behavior is meeting a friend.
First, the visual information of your eyes is sent to your brain by nervous cells. There the information is interpreted and translated into a signal to take action. Finally the brain sends a command to your voice or to another action system like muscles or glands. For example, you may start walking towards him.
Your nervous system enables this rapid recognition and action. ''

Well, lets take just one of our senses, vision. Light enters through the cornea, reaches the retina and is converted to nerve impulses by complex chemical reactions (rod,cones, etc) and conveyed by the optic nerve to the visual cortex, from there it is propagated throughout the brain, gathering memory and information before the signals return to the visual cortex and a representation of that information is formed, a conscious image of what we see.

The visual information is interpreted by the various systems of the brain and translated into a signals to take action (visual,auditory,tactile reflexes) and on to the prefrontal cortex region which deal with complex responses, one's social values, cultural expectations, ethics, etc - the seat of one's personality and sense of self. Finally the brain forms conscious thoughts a deliberation and sends a commands to its motor neurons, muscle groups, glands... and the action is undertaken.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Word twisting an argument does not make.

Much worse when such is being done in the name of philosophy.

Not funny.

Grotesques obviously.

Obviously you actually mean it when you say words are make ideas.

Not sure what you mean here. Could you give an example?

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Interesting when you add objects to forces as causal when objects are the things determined by forces (laws of nature).

Obviously you can't make a legitimate argument ever. Always twisting always making up so what you want becomes in your mind what is.

It's not.

Your twisting of language only adds noise which is easily detected and corrected.

Please stop. Your doing so is making these threads worthless as instruments through which valuable useable information is revealed and codified.

The laws of nature are not actually forces. They are formulas used to describe forces. For example, gravity is a force. The law of gravity is not a force, it simply describes how to calculate the effect of gravity upon other objects. Carl Hoefer describes it this way:

In the physical sciences, the assumption that there are fundamental, exceptionless laws of nature, and that they have some strong sort of modal force, usually goes unquestioned. Indeed, talk of laws “governing” and so on is so commonplace that it takes an effort of will to see it as metaphorical. We can characterize the usual assumptions about laws in this way: the laws of nature are assumed to be pushy explainers. They make things happen in certain ways , and by having this power, their existence lets us explain why things happen in certain ways. -- https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/determinism-causal/#:~:text=In the physical,in certain ways.
(Highlights mine.)

But if we wish to carry that metaphor forward, then we must not leave ourselves out of the picture. We would each be unique packages of those laws of nature, going about in the world causing events, for our own purposes and reasons. And when we act, we are forces of nature.

For example, the Earth's orbit around the Sun is caused by the Earth's trajectory and mass and the Sun's mass. Planets do not consult the laws of nature before acting. They simply do what they do, and the laws of nature are our notes and comments upon what we observe them doing.

If you are having issues with specific words or statements, please provide examples, describe the issue the example demonstrates, and we can discuss them.

 

[Jarhyn]

Well, I'm just going to keep on the computer not-even-metaphor.

Computers, functionally, can act as universes. In a very real way they ARE universes, or... Well, we really don't have a term for "universe, but not, because it has available but constrained I/O".

We use computers in such a way as to produce small universes which we can test against parity with our own universe.

When we cut it off from outside, it is a universe in truth. It has an independent identity, a deterministic line.

But the most interesting thing is that we are in the process of reverse engineering the algorithms of the process. We are like... The memory. The stuff that is at the addresses.

Determinism discusses "code interaction with processor".

Free Will is a game theoretic tool that describes not "what does the scoreboard and goal do to count the tick and time and quarters and the passing of objects through places and what rules shall be enforced by enigmatic and unspecified means" but "how do I get the ball trough the big metal loop sticking out of the ground without a a ref tackling me?"

One relates to the other, but they are different.

 

[steve_bank]

Word twisting an argument does not make.

Much worse when such is being done in the name of philosophy.

Not funny.

Grotesques obviously.

Obviously you actually mean it when you say words are make ideas.

Not sure what you mean here. Could you give an example?

You are using words that have specific meaning to fromderinside and myself as philosophical ideas which they are not.

 

[DBT]

Behaviour that happens without coercion is an event, being an event generated by numerous factors, conscious will playing very little part, declaring it to be 'free will' is false labelling. We are able to act out of our own volition. Volition is not willed, volition is not free will.

But volition is chosen. "Will I have the salad or the cheeseburger?" Pause for consideration of the benefits and deficits of each choice. "I had the salad yesterday, so I will treat myself to a cheeseburger today". A freely chosen volition is appropriately called "free will".

"Hand over your wallet or I'll put a bullet in you!". "I don't want to lose my wallet, but, then again I really don't want to lose my life, so okay, I will give my wallet to the guy with the gun." A choice forced upon us against our will is called "coercion".

Coercion is about manipulating the choosing, specifically to force someone to submit their will to the guy holding the gun.

Now, if the choice is made unconsciously, rather than consciously, then the dialog might not be expressed in words, but rather in whatever internal symbols are used by the unconscious brain to carry out the calculation. Either way, the dialog reflects the calculation.

Volition, the process by which actions are performed is unconscious. The brain responds to its inputs in each and every circumstance. Selecting circumstances that don't involve compulsion from external forces doesn't make it free will. It's simply will. We have will. We act according to our makeup and environment.

 

[none]

"But, but, but...I ba wanna..."

 

[DBT]

Word twisting an argument does not make.

Much worse when such is being done in the name of philosophy.

Not funny.

Grotesques obviously.

Obviously you actually mean it when you say words are make ideas.

Not sure what you mean here. Could you give an example?

You are using words that have specific meaning to fromderinside and myself as philosophical ideas which they are not.

Compatibalism appears to be a word game.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Yes, choosing what we will do is a deterministic operation. However, determinism never actually determines anything. Only the objects and forces that make up the universe can cause events. Determinism is simply the belief that the objects and the forces behave reliably as they do so.

Not ''choosing'' what we do, but what we do. What we do not being a matter of possible alternatives or choice (what is possible for someone else is not necessarily possible for you). Choice implies the ability to do otherwise in any instance. No such possibility exists within a determined system. The objects and events of a determined system is the system. Nothing gets to act differently.

Let's try a thought experiment. You are driving down the road and see a red traffic light up ahead. But you don't know whether it will still be red when you get there, or whether it will turn green by the time you arrive. As you get nearer, the light is still red, so you slow down. But just as you're slowing down, the light turns green. So, you speed up again and proceed through the light.

Your hard determinist friend, in the passenger seat, says, "Why did you slow down?"

You reply, "Because the light could have remained red."

"No, it couldn't", your friend replies, "because it was predetermined from the Big Bang that this light would turn green before you reached it. Thus, it was always impossible that it would be red. It could only be green."

"So, why did you slow down?", he asks again.

So, why did you slow down?

 

[rousseau]

The 'Quantitative' Argument for a Non-Contradictory Acceptance of Agency

This argument starts with a challenge to the fundamental axiom of determinism - that existence is in fact deterministic. To be deterministic, we must have a system in which for any given input or set of inputs, there is exactly and only one possible result. It is best represented as a mathematical formula that falls into the cluster of "n to 1" formulae.

I submit that existence is NOT deterministic, but is rather stochastic. I posit that for any set of inputs, it is possible for more than one result to occur, with each result having a different likelihood.

The premise for a deterministic existence inherently assumes that as long as we have all of the information, we can perfectly predict the outcome of any path of events. This then, requires that it is possible to acquire all information, which subsequently implies that all information is knowable in the first place. And we know that the last clause is false. Not all things are knowable. Some things are unknowable. At a very base minimum, we have quantum effects where it is impossible to simultaneously know a particle's position and velocity at the same time.

I think that unknowability extends to things much larger than quantum particles though. Let's take a simple example: how many leaves did my tree have on it last week? While we might know that an answer exists from a mathematical and philosophical perspective, we cannot actually know that answer. The number of leaves on my tree is obviously a countable number less than infinity. It's a finite number. But what is that number? Nobody knows. And nobody *can* know. Nobody counted the leaves on my tree last week. And even if someone were to have begun counting the number of leaves on my tree last week, within the time span that it would take for them to count the leaves, some leaves would have fallen or some new leaves would have budded. By the time they finished counting, their count would be inaccurate.

We could, however, make a very good estimate of the number of leaves on my tree last week. We would need to know the average number of leaves in a given volume, and whether there were temperature changes that would have caused more or fewer leaves a week ago, and the rough volume of the leaf-bearing structures on the tree. With that, we can get to an estimate that is probably good enough for most purposes.

But it wouldn't be exact. There would still remain an error bound around that estimate. We might estimate 10,000 leaves... but we would have to acknowledge that it might be anywhere between 7,000 and 13,000 for example.

I must conclude that existence is not deterministic, it is stochastic. The set of inputs to any given operation is always incomplete, and is frequently massively incomplete. It is not possible to know every single thing required in order to guarantee and exact singular outcome as the only possibility.

"Okay" you might say, "But that's just randomness, that still doesn't endorse agency". Well, let's move on to that next.

As I said in my prior post, agency is then the ability to apply a pattern to externalities, make a prediction about the likely outcome, and then react to that prediction in order to influence events. Let's walk through the components of this definition.

The ability to find a pattern is inherently dependent on the ability to take in and store external information. In order to have agency of any level, the object must first have a means of perception, a way of observing and interacting with the world around it. What do we mean by perception? Perception requires that the object be able to process and react to external stimuli. The security light at my front door can do that - it senses movement and turns on when certain conditions are met. It processes the external stimuli of movement and reacts by flipping a switch to on. A rock cannot do any of that, it cannot process external stimuli, and it cannot react to that stimuli. There is no coding in a rock that allows it to sort and respond to conditional stimuli, thus a rock cannot have agency.

Being able to perceive externalities is not, however, sufficient by itself. The object must also be able to store salient elements of those perceptions, it must have a memory of at least some capacity. That storage capacity is integral to the ability to determine a pattern. In order to find a pattern, the object must be able to compare the elements of one event to the elements of another event and find commonalities. If there is no means of storage, then no pattern can be found. My porch light doesn't have any storage. All if can do is react, which it does quite nicely. I could attach it to some recording software, which would allow it to record what set it off. But alas, my security light would still not qualify as an agent: it has no means to compare independent recordings against one another to determine a pattern.

The pattern recognition element is necessary in order to make a prediction. And with some of our more advanced technologies, we're getting quite good with pattern recognition. Marketing certainly has done its fair share of pattern recognition. Every time you get a recommendation based on your past Netflix viewing habits, that is pattern recognition in action. Every time Amazon says "other customers also bought this... " they're employing pattern recognition. Amazon also has the means to perceive and store external information; the software observes the purchases that you make as well as other items that you browsed before purchase, and it stores metadata about your purchasing history. That's how it identifies patterns in the first place.

Does Amazon make predictions about whether or not you'll purchase what they suggest? This is where things get fuzzy, and I don't really know for certain. I'm sure that Amazon calculates probabilities with respect to related purchases, and applies those probabilities to prioritize what to suggest. I'm not sure whether they do that in an aggregate fashion or in an individual fashion with probabilities curated for each individual. I think we have a lot of technology that is right at this edge, identifying patterns and making some level of prediction.

There is some gray area between finding a pattern, employing a pattern predictively, and proactively taking action to influence an outcome. There are some solid arguments that could be made that curated advertising has agency - especially if it's dynamic and based on a learning algorithm.

There's a difference between agency and intelligence, which I won't go into here. I think a good argument could be made that many things have agency to varying degrees: Ad software might have very limited agency, as the number of criteria used to determine a pattern, and the number of actions available to make suggestions to influence behavior are necessarily very limited.

On the other hand, I would say that by my argument, my cat certainly has agency, and a decent bit of it as well. Agency is necessary for training, and the more complex the conditioning the more agency is required. Sometimes that training isn't even intentional. For example, my cat like freeze dried salmon treats. They are her favorite, and given the chance she will (and has) gutted the bag and eaten an entire 6 oz of them. For freeze died food, 6 oz is a lot, I still don't know how her stomach didn't explode. Anyway, we play with her when we give her treats. Sometimes we toss them down the hall and she runs after them and chases them. Sometimes she sits at the end of the hall and plays "goalie" with them. Sometimes we give them to her outside in the courtyard. Sometimes we hold them in our hand and she eats them there with her fuzzy little muzzle tickling our fingers. Sometimes we hold them above her so she has to stand on her hind legs like a meerkat in order to get them.

That's all very cute, but lets bring this back around to agency. My cat has learned that these behaviors are associated with treats. She perceived the smell and taste of treats, and she perceived the times of day and the order of routines involved. She knows that after I get up in the morning, there will be treats. Furthermore, she knows that the treats will be given after I have filled her food and water bowl, and after I have filled the coffee pot, and while the coffee is brewing. She anticipates the treats: when I fill the coffee pot and she hears it start, she stands up, because she has identified the pattern than almost always results in treats. Sometimes she's wrong - sometimes I don't have coffee, I have tea. Sometimes she doesn't get treats if she's been constipated recently. But she predicts when those treats will occur.

And beyond that, she engages in proactive behavior to influence the game for treats each day. Sometimes she will go to the door and quite clearly ask to have her treats outside. Sometimes she will run to the end of the hall and indicate that I should toss the treats to her. Sometimes she sits and the front of the hall and looks at me over her shoulder so I know she wants me to throw them so she can chase. Sometimes she meerkats for them without me prompting her at all. She has the agency to indicate what she wants and uses that agency to influence my behavior toward her desired outcome.

That's a lot about agency in here. But what, you may ask, does it have to do with a stochastic existence?

Well, here it is in a nutshell. Given that existence is stochastic, any predictions are probabilistic in nature. Sometimes the probability of a specific outcome is so close to 1.0 as to be guaranteed. Sometimes it's a true coin flip. Most of the time, the number of possible outcomes are bounded; bounded by physical constraints, bounded by time or resources, or in the case of agency, bounded by what the agent can imagine as outcomes. The agent taking action will also be bounded by their perceptive capacity, memory capacity, facility with pattern recognition, and their extrapolative intelligence.

The set of inputs is necessarily limited. Some of the information that may affect an outcome is unknowable. The processes available to an agent are limited. And within all of that there does exist at least some element of pure randomness. As a result, while the outcome may in many cases be highly predictable, it is NOT deterministically knowable.

Sufficiently complex processes have agency, and given a set of inputs that is incomplete and contains some unknowable unknowns, the result of any given decision cannot be perfectly predicted.

If we look up the definition of 'agent' we get: something that produces or is capable of producing an effect

Linguistically, it sounds like the term is a short-hand to say: this [object/thing/being] should be given real consideration because it could have an effect on our own well-being. But beyond that it's really a generalization and not a binary; there is no clear delineation, or sharp boundary on when something does or does not have agency. Point being (throwing back to my earlier post) that the phrase agency is just a convenient linguistic construct, and doesn't actually tell us anything specific about what we're describing.

IMO, this is important because discussing ipso facto agency doesn't really get us closer to the definition, meaning, or objective reality of a human life. But, on the other hand, you've already described a number of other properties of human beings: pattern recognition, memory, stochastic existence etc. To me it's actually knowing these qualities which is important to understanding human life and experience. It doesn't really matter whether they imply free will or agency, or anything else, because these properties describe what we actually are objectively. Ultimately, they can't prove that we have free will or agency because these two terms are just linguistic constructs with no concrete definition. We're free to call people agents if we want to, but that doesn't really tell us anything meaningful about their lived experience. So again, being stochastic, having pattern recognition etc is what's actually important to understanding our lived experience, rather than obsessing over whether we are/are not free, or are/are not agents.

Further, if we're looking at the concept of freedom I think it's also crucial to include the environment in which we live and survive. To me one of the very tangible constraints on our freedom isn't how we function, but how we can't escape our own culture, biological needs, and moral law. In a very real way we aren't free not because of the implications of physical law, but because culture and biology limits the range of our behaviour in a very real way.

I've been thinking about my last few posts little more, and I think I can distill them down a bit. For the most part I'm suggesting that the obsession over freedom is irrelevant; we are material beings with objective qualities, and it is those knowable, and definable qualities that are relevant to understanding ourselves.

We are composed of atoms whose behaviour can be described (stochastic), but animals aren't atoms. Likely the stochastic quality does emerge in our behaviour, but in practice we are an unfathomably complex system of atoms whose behaviour and existence needs a more complex and refined explanation. An explanation that likely emerges as we move through physics -> chemistry -> biology -> sociology. Physical explanations have to underlie how we function, but they don't, and can't really tell the full story of human existence and experience. And at the same time I think if you were to draw out the principles of chemistry/biology/sociology the lack of freedom within a logical, and material system would still be present.

One anecdote I keep thinking about lately that points out the absurdity and irrelevance of the determinism/unfree argument is the experience I have with my 17 month old son. I can accept that I live in a materialistic world full-stop with no sense of dissonance, and yet I love my kid. I love when I get to pick him up at daycare every day, I love playing with him, I love caring for him. He brings genuine joy, meaning, and purpose to my existence. So in a situation like that - what, if anything, does determinism tell us? Am I supposed to feel like my relationship with my family is meaningless because it's out of my control? Is the joy and love I feel an illusion? Obviously that conclusion is missing something.

So on one hand we have the laws of physics that describe the universe, and on the other hand we have living things that have evolved over billions of years. It may be apt to understand ourselves in the context of physics, but I don't think raw physical laws can really explain or encapsulate human experience or our objective existence. Because in truth, while we are material, we have unique qualities of our own that are being completely overlooked while we obsess over how atoms behave, and how we can't will otherwise.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Who and what we are is not a meaningful constraint. If we were free from ourselves we would be someone else. So, freedom from "inner necessity", our own purposes and reasons, our own genetic dispositions and prior experiences, our own thoughts and feelings, our own beliefs and values, and all the other things that make us who and what we are, is impossible.

Because "freedom from causal necessity" and "freedom from ourselves" are absurdities, the notion of free will can never be assumed to imply either one.

Fortunately, free will does not imply either one. Free will means our choice was free from coercion and other forms of undue influence. Nothing more, and nothing less. Once we get that straight, the war between determinism and free will ends.

Who and what we are is shaped and formed by elements outside of our control.

Partially, but not totally. From the moment we're born, we are active participants in the social shaping of our lives, negotiating for control with our physical environment (the crib) and our social environment (our parents). Any father or mother who is awakened by their newborn for the 2AM feeding knows that their lives have been radically changed by the needs and demands of their child.

We have no say about our genetic makeup, who our parents are, the culture we were born into, our mental and physical attributes, etc, etc.

Correct. But, as I just noted, we do immediately impact our parents, and later we impact even our culture. Lifeforms showing up in an environment both shape that environment as well as being shaped by that environment.

They are our inescapable constraints. Being exposed to other cultures other languages, beliefs, expands who we are. Information acting upon our makeup changes us constantly, the you of a moment ago not being identical to the you now or the you in the moment to come.

"Inescapable constraints"? Why not inescapable enablers? Don't our genes provide us with bodies and brains that empower us? Doesn't exposure to our own culture enable us to operate successfully within our society? And, as you point out, our abilities and our intelligence are expanded even further by exposure to other cultures, new information, and other points of view.

Yes, we are constantly changing. But we also get to choose which social influences and ideas will become part of our evolving identity, and which we will discard as inconsistent with who and what we believe we are, and who we believe we should be.

Cognition;
''Every moment of the day your nervous system is active. It exchanges millions of signals corresponding with feeling, thoughts and actions. A simple example of how important the nervous system is in your behavior is meeting a friend.
First, the visual information of your eyes is sent to your brain by nervous cells. There the information is interpreted and translated into a signal to take action. Finally the brain sends a command to your voice or to another action system like muscles or glands. For example, you may start walking towards him.
Your nervous system enables this rapid recognition and action. ''

Yes, indeed. We do have feelings, and we do think, and we do take actions. And every experience is happening within the brain, as it deals with the external facts of the real world outside us.

But one of these real world experiences is when we encounter a problem or issue that requires us to make a decision. And it is within this same brain that we decide for ourselves what we will do. We call this "choosing what we will do". And when this choosing is free of coercion and undue influence, we call this "free will", which is literally a freely chosen "I will".

Well, lets take just one of our senses, vision. Light enters through the cornea, reaches the retina and is converted to nerve impulses by complex chemical reactions (rod,cones, etc) and conveyed by the optic nerve to the visual cortex, from there it is propagated throughout the brain, gathering memory and information before the signals return to the visual cortex and a representation of that information is formed, a conscious image of what we see.

The visual information is interpreted by the various systems of the brain and translated into a signals to take action (visual,auditory,tactile reflexes) and on to the prefrontal cortex region which deal with complex responses, one's social values, cultural expectations, ethics, etc - the seat of one's personality and sense of self. Finally the brain forms conscious thoughts a deliberation and sends a commands to its motor neurons, muscle groups, glands... and the action is undertaken.

Well, it is interesting to know how sight works. But that's not really the topic of this thread. The notion of free will is more about the brain's process of choosing what the person will do next.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

You are using words that have specific meaning to fromderinside and myself as philosophical ideas which they are not.

Compatibalism appears to be a word game.

Still waiting for an example of the "word twisting" that fromderinside suggested.

 

[fromderinside]

This:

DBT writes:

I do not think free choice exists in any absolute sense. We are always limited by our brain biology.

Marvin Edwards replies:

Right, there is no such thing as absolute freedom.

Same words yet the latter is not a proper reply to the former.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

This:

DBT writes:

I do not think free choice exists in any absolute sense. We are always limited by our brain biology.

Marvin Edwards replies:

Right, there is no such thing as absolute freedom.

Same words yet the latter is not a proper reply to the former.

Okay. Let me clarify:
A. There is no choosing that is absolutely free of every kind of constraint. So, there is no such thing as absolute freedom.
B. But there is choosing that is absolutely free of coercion and undue influence. So, there is such a thing as free will.

1. Free will never implies a choice that is absolutely free of every kind of constraint. There are plenty of natural constraints that apply to our choosing. It is constrained by our imagination, by our intelligence, by the information available to us, etc.

2. Free will never implies a choice that is free of causal necessity. Every choice we make, whether the choice is right or wrong, or well-reasoned or fallaciously reasoned, is always reliably caused by our purpose and reasoning, our thoughts and feelings, our genetic dispositions and prior life experiences, our beliefs and values, and all the other things that make us who and what we are. When that which is us is also that which does the choosing, then the choice is reliably caused (deterministic), and also reliably caused by us (free will).

3. Free will never implies a choice that is free from who and what we are. The only way to be free from who and what we are is to be someone else, and it would be their will, not ours, that was freely chosen.

Free will simply implies a choice free of coercion and other forms of undue influence. This is the meaning of free will that is actually used when assessing a person's moral or legal responsibility for their actions. The choice is reliably caused, and thus deterministic, causally necessary from any prior point in time. The choice is reliably caused by us. Our act of deliberation is the final responsible cause of our deliberate action. We are the most meaningful and relevant cause, unless...

Unless we're not! If the most meaningful and relevant cause was a guy holding a gun to our head, then he will be held responsible for our actions. If the most meaningful and relevant cause was a mental illness, then that illness will be held responsible for our actions.

Questions?

 

[DBT]

Free will is being used as a kind of A Priori label. A label that doesn't represent brain function, which does not work on the principle of free will. Function is not willed. It is function, not Will, that determines output.

 

[DBT]

Yes, choosing what we will do is a deterministic operation. However, determinism never actually determines anything. Only the objects and forces that make up the universe can cause events. Determinism is simply the belief that the objects and the forces behave reliably as they do so.

Not ''choosing'' what we do, but what we do. What we do not being a matter of possible alternatives or choice (what is possible for someone else is not necessarily possible for you). Choice implies the ability to do otherwise in any instance. No such possibility exists within a determined system. The objects and events of a determined system is the system. Nothing gets to act differently.

Let's try a thought experiment. You are driving down the road and see a red traffic light up ahead. But you don't know whether it will still be red when you get there, or whether it will turn green by the time you arrive. As you get nearer, the light is still red, so you slow down. But just as you're slowing down, the light turns green. So, you speed up again and proceed through the light.

Your hard determinist friend, in the passenger seat, says, "Why did you slow down?"

You reply, "Because the light could have remained red."

"No, it couldn't", your friend replies, "because it was predetermined from the Big Bang that this light would turn green before you reached it. Thus, it was always impossible that it would be red. It could only be green."

"So, why did you slow down?", he asks again.

So, why did you slow down?

The brain is constantly acquiring information and responding to it, as an intelligent information processor the brain is able to respond to changing conditions as the information is acquired. Adjusting to conditions milliseconds after they occur. Re, your example, the brain estimates probability based on past experience, how long a light stays green, travel speed, etc, which determines whether you must stop or there is sufficient time to cross before the light turns amber or red.

What happens on any occasion is determined by an interaction of multiple elements, speed, distance, light cycle times, urgency, mood, etc, which come together as an action performed: on this occasion you stop as the light turns amber.


Pattern Recognition;
''Neuroscientists have repeatedly pointed out that pattern recognition represents the key to understanding cognition in humans. Pattern recognition also forms the very basis by which we predict future events, i e. we are literally forced to make assumptions concerning outcomes,and we do so by relying on sequences of events experienced in the past.''

''Huettel et al. point out that their study identifies the role various regions of prefrontal cortex play in moment-to-moment processing of mental events in order to make predictions about future events. Thus implicit predictive models are formed which need to be continuously updated, the disruption of sequence would indicate that the PFC is engaged in a novelty response to pattern changes. As a third possible explanation, Ivry and Knight propose that activation of the prefrontal cortex may reflect the generation of hypotheses, since the formulation of an hypothesis is an essential feature of higher-level cognition.
A monitoring of participants awareness during pattern recognition could provide a test of the PFC’s ability to formulate hypotheses concerning future outcomes.''


A parietal-premotor network for movement intention and motor awareness
''It is commonly assumed that we are conscious of our movements mainly because we can sense ourselves moving as ongoing peripheral information coming from our muscles and retina reaches the brain. Recent evidence, however, suggests that, contrary to common beliefs, conscious intention to move is independent of movement execution per se. We propose that during movement execution it is our initial intentions that we are mainly aware of. Furthermore, the experience of moving as a conscious act is associated with increased activity in a specific brain region: the posterior parietal cortex. We speculate that movement intention and awareness are generated and monitored in this region. We put forward a general framework of the cognitive and neural processes involved in movement intention and motor awareness.''