Compatibilism: What's that About?

[DBT]

... intention is absolutely something a human being can control. And even if it were not, the intention, regardless of whether I put it there on purpose, is still a part of "me" that is "choosing" based on that intention: the "agency of will" (misused the terms here you did) is part of that progression of antecedents.

Even if I didn't regularly muck about with my intents, they are still MY intents and determine MY choice function on information.

Decision-Making
''Decision-making is such a seamless brain process that we’re usually unaware of it — until our choice results in unexpected consequences. Then we may look back and wonder, “Why did I choose that option?” In recent years, neuroscientists have begun to decode the decision-making process. What they’re learning is shedding light not only on how the healthy brain performs complex mental functions, but also on how disorders, such as stroke or drug abuse, affect the process.''

Your reference demonstrates that most people are unfamiliar with the inner workings of their brain. However, it also demonstrates that people are correct in their observation that their brain does, in fact, make decisions. And that their assumption that it is their own brain that is doing the deciding is empirically correct.

Yes, but the critical point is that you don't choose the state and condition of 'your' brain. The issue here being that it's the unchosen state and condition of the brain that 'chooses' you. You are whatever the brain is doing.

Everything is fine if the brain is functioning normally, producing rational decisions....but what happens when neural networks malfunction. and bad decisions and irrational behaviour is produced?

In which case it demonstrates that irrational decision making and bad behaviour is no more a choice than rational decision making and good behaviour.

So if a compatibilist claims that it is 'you' who is making decisions, therefore free will....it is equally true that if the brain is dysfunctional, it is 'you' who is choosing to be dysfunctional, therefore free will.

Who would freely choose that? Nobody.

At which point the compatibilist foundation of 'you' freely making decisions falls apart.

Condition, not choice determines behaviour.

On the neurology of morals
''Patients with medial prefrontal lesions often display irresponsible behavior, despite being intellectually unimpaired. But similar lesions occurring in early childhood can also prevent the acquisition of factual knowledge about accepted standards of moral behavior.''

 

[DBT]

prior to conscious experience and will

Experience and will are neural processes.

Nothing you have said changes that, nothing that I have said changes that.

As I said, I can map exactly when I made the decision "to block a punch", and it happened about 13 years ago. I fully recognize that sometimes the subvocalizations take a bit to bubble up past the actual moment I make the decision, but I also recognize that it is not about the subvocalizations layer to the experience stack, it's about the... Well, I can't describe emotions without them to others.

non-physical agent

What the everliving fuck are you smoking?

You... What? Believe that compatibilist think that the agent is nonphysical?

Talk about childish.

I have never once proposed agency is nonphysical. WE ARE MACHINES! Entirely and physically.

What I have is a will, that will is a physical set of tokens which will physically be interpreted by my physical meat which will physically squish and zap and squirt various ways that will take that signal, that plan so as to evaluate it for errors and determine a preliminary "freedom estimation" on the will. Ultimately the rest of it's "real freedom" is in whether I manage to execute the plan.

Some parts of the plan may even expect a likelihood of that bit of the will being constrained, around which I must execute a secondary will that maintains freedom overall.

A waste of time, I don't see that you have anything worthwhile to say on the subject.

 

[rousseau]

When people pine for free-will I think what they really mean is that they want freedom. Doing otherwise can alternatively mean a wide range of freedom in which to do - action being determined, but the arena in which to act is the variable we're actually interested in vis a vis freedom.

When you look at a biological system - humans - constraints like energy and freedom of movement are what's actually relevant to us. If our movement is severely restricted - prison - we cannot do otherwise. If we're a multi-millionaire we can say that we're more free.

 

[DBT]

You have no awareness of what 'your' cells are doing

You do know that one of my primary interests is in neural math ya? Like... Writing algorithms that execute neural behavioral patterns, manually defining biases and values on the neural equation (it's pretty simple linear algebra), and then assembling those neurons specifically to accomplish simple data filtration machines?

It just doesn't come through in your posts. I have provided abundant information from neuroscience, people qualified in their field - Mark Hallett, et al - case studies, experiments, quotes, etc, citing my sources.....yet, given your objections and remarks, it appears that you are neither familiar with the material or understand the implications even though the researchers themselves describe their significance.

But moreover, I am my cells. I have an awareness of what they are doing from the inside because what they do, I am, and I experience it to the extent that it is orthogonal to the part of the nervous system I am implemented in...

Oh right, so when a brain is dysfunctional, producing self destructive irrational behaviour, that condition is the freely willed choice of the patient? Because, well, gosh, gee whiz, the person is their cells?

Pull the other one. You have no idea.

 

[DBT]

Then you are not talking about determinism.

The foundation of determinism is the assumption of a world of perfectly reliable cause and effect. Every event is the reliable result of prior events, from the motion of the planets to the thoughts going through our heads right now.

This would necessarily include all of the options on the menu and our ability to order any of those items for dinner. It would necessarily include the imagining of new possibilities, such as the Wright brothers inventing a flying machine.

It would necessarily include my consideration of the steak versus the salad for dinner, and my choosing the salad.

It would necessarily include the fact that no one was holding a gun to my head and that I was a sane adult making this choice for myself. Thus, it would necessarily be the case that I would be free to choose for myself what I would have for dinner.

And, just as it was necessary that I would choose the salad, it was also necessary that I could have chosen the steak.

Determinism is not merely 'reliable causality' - as if causality is a friend that enables our desires to be realized.

Determinism allows no alternate actions. Determinism begins before consciousness; events fix outcome before we even think and act.

Nor did I say that multiple options don't exist, just that only one course of action is realizable in any given instance, the determined option.

You are not talking about determinism. You are talking of an implication falsely derived from determinism. You see, every option on the menu was realizable, even after the single inevitable option was realized.

What I said is the very definition of determinism. You yourself gave essentially the same definition;

''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.

Every option cannot be realizable before you choose the salad. Salad, being determined, was the only option open to you. If the world is determined, the perception of alternatives is an illusion.

As you say, 'events proceed without deviation'' If alternate actions could be realized, events would not proceed without deviation, so the world would not be deterministic.

If you use the language correctly, you'll find that "I chose the salad, even though I could have chosen the steak" is true in both parts. The fact that I chose the salad is never a contradiction of the fact that I could have chosen the steak.

Given the objections described above, alternate actions are not possible....which means that 'I could have chosen' is a moot point.

The "I could have" refers to an option that (a) was not chosen, but which (b) may have been chosen under different circumstances. And both of these facts are consistent with what actually happened and with everything happening consistent with determinism.

The only reason that anyone thinks otherwise is due to the forking paradox. It is a self-induced hoax brought on by a few false but believable suggestions. You are effectively manipulated by the paradox.

There are no different circumstances within a determined system, where events proceed precisely as determined 'without deviation.'

If circumstances were different, it would be the different circumstances, both external and internal, that determines your action in that instance and that instance alone. Which is the case in each and every instance as life and the world grind on.

Determined is not chosen. The decision is determined before you even look at the menu. What you choose has no alternative. It can only be that and nothing else, until conditions change the dynamic.

And, being under the influence of one false conclusion leads to additional false conclusions. For example:

DBT: "Determined is not chosen". -- Really? Then how is it that the customers each chose what they would have for dinner? The correct statement is that the process of choosing is a necessitated event within a deterministic system and the process of choosing will itself be deterministic. But you cannot falsely claim that choosing doesn't happen. We've seen it happen. All of the neuroscience experiments about decision making confirm that it is a real event that takes place within the brain.

As I said, customers inevitably select the option that is their determined action, each according to their own state and condition, proclivities, circumstances, etc, etc.

“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

DBT: "The decision is determined before you even look at the menu." -- Really? Are you suggesting some kind of omniscience in the human brain? I'm pretty sure neuroscience will not back you up on that.

It's precisely as you put it:
''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.

DBT: "What you choose has no alternative". -- The alternative to the steak is the salad. The alternative to the salad is the steak. Choosing itself requires at least two alternatives, so it will always be the case that every choice will have at least one alternative.

Different people, different states and conditions, each acting/choosing according to their condition in each instance in time.

If determinism allowed alternate actions, a case may be made for free will.....but alas...

DBT: "It can only be that and nothing else, until conditions change the dynamic." -- As you should know by now, the true statement is that "It will only be that and nothing else". To claim that "It can only be that and nothing else" creates a logical absurdity, because one cannot choose between a single possibility.

It's just you say, determinism is a progression of events ''without deviation.''

Quote;
''Still others, most notably David Hume and some prominent contemporary social psychologists, believe they can have it both ways: accept determinism while also postulating a type of non-libertarian, straight-jacketed “free” will that still enables moral judgment [I put the “free” in quotation marks because the semantics are drained from the word.''

 

[Jarhyn]

that is not enough to claim physical

Dude, our whole reality is physical. You can ot say "the universe is deterministic" if you cannot already start with "everything within it obeys physical law on a fixed and sequential way".

YOU started with physical by starting with "determinism".

What gets me to physical is the fact that I have done exactly this thing with full physical surety as regards a machine.

I have actually designed a processor before, designed an assembly, designed a compiler, and compiled language through the compiler, into an assembly, and executed it on the processor.

I have taken things end to end, from plan, through plan translation/compilation to execution of plan.

Once you've seen the process it is not hard to do the analogical transform to see a similar process is going on inside our meat.

You are using your god-of-the-gaps argument to try to claim that something that clearly exists as a function of a more simple system that very clearly exists in our universe does not occur and cannot in a much more built-up system, despite the fact that we designed computers based on ourselves and how we seemed to process information at the time.

The only difference really is that our process has a process that gets all meta about the process.

First logic is a tool misused by many.

The distinction is between activity based on physical verification and activity base on self-verification. When you understand your models logic are based on "ideals' and presumptions you will be on the road to understanding why science is based on physical verification. That your brain is a physical organ is not assurance that what it produces is physically verifiable.

Yes, logic certainly is misused by some...



Our universe is capable of producing machines capable of taking instructions, and executing behavior on the basis of those instructions, and those instructions are capable of static analysis and even execution on other platforms.

These are wills.

The wills can be assessed as free or constrained. They will either execute and run, or they will not, but moreover they will pass their unit tests or they will not. This is a real property.

We have plans... We have objective evaluation.. we have success criterion...

That's all the ingredients to compatibilist free will right there.

Then you handwaved with your special pleading saying "you don't REALLY know how the MEAT works~" despite the fact that I do well enough to see that it can do the same things as a computer but is better at taking messier input and capable of outputting information back into itself to a much greater degree.

either the UNIVERSE is deterministic and the description of determinism itself can be used to prove that choice function is not something that happens (LOL!) Or you are wrong and choice function is something that happens.

One thing being chosen from many is choice. The choice is being made by the element of the system which operates the choosing function, in that moment.

That element chooses, no other, in that moment.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Yes, but the critical point is that you don't choose the state and condition of 'your' brain. The issue here being that it's the unchosen state and condition of the brain that 'chooses' you. You are whatever the brain is doing.

Close enough. It is unnecessary for us to choose the state and condition of our brain, because we ARE that state and condition. Whatever the brain chooses from the restaurant menu, WE have chosen.

And when our brain/ourselves is free to make that choice for itself, without coercion and undue influence, it is a freely chosen intent, commonly known as "free will".

Everything is fine if the brain is functioning normally, producing rational decisions....but what happens when neural networks malfunction. and bad decisions and irrational behaviour is produced?

If the cause of the behavior is a significant mental illness or injury, then we would attempt to correct that cause medically and psychiatrically. And if the behavior poses a threat to others, then the patient would be treated in a secure facility.

The nature of the cause determines the method of correction.
A. The bank teller's behavior of handing over the bank's money to the robber is corrected by removing the coercive threat.
B. The criminally insane person's behavior is corrected medically and psychiatrically.
C. The bank robber's deliberate behavior is corrected by changing how he thinks about robbing banks in his future deliberations.

In which case it demonstrates that irrational decision making and bad behaviour is no more a choice than rational decision making and good behaviour.

First, you are suggesting that we must first choose how our brain chooses before we can be responsible for the choice. You are creating a paradox.

Second, you are removing the distinction between the normal brain and the mentally ill or injured brain. If you remove that distinction, then would you put the criminally insane in prison, or, would you put the sane criminal in a psychiatric hospital? Sweeping meaningful distinctions under the rug of an abstract generality has consequences.

In order reduce harmful events, we must identify the meaningful and relevant causes, then use the correction methods that are appropriate to each cause.

So if a compatibilist claims that it is 'you' who is making decisions, therefore free will....it is equally true that if the brain is dysfunctional, it is 'you' who is choosing to be dysfunctional, therefore free will. Who would freely choose that? Nobody.

Someone would have to be crazy to choose to be dysfunctional. On the other hand, if it got him out of prison on an insanity plea it would be a rational choice, proving he was sane, a literal example of Catch-22.

At which point the compatibilist foundation of 'you' freely making decisions falls apart.

Only if you use an irrational definition of free will, such as "freedom from causal necessity", or, "freedom from one's own brain".

Free will is when a person decides for themselves what they will do, while free of coercion and other forms of undue influence, such as a significant mental illness that impaired the ability to make sane choices.

Once we stop using irrational, paradoxical definitions, free will starts to make sense again.

Condition, not choice determines behaviour.

On the neurology of morals
''Patients with medial prefrontal lesions often display irresponsible behavior, despite being intellectually unimpaired. But similar lesions occurring in early childhood can also prevent the acquisition of factual knowledge about accepted standards of moral behavior.''

Your example demonstrates that an impaired brain is unable to make appropriate decisions because it lacks "factual knowledge about accepted standards of moral behavior". It does not suggest that decisions are not being made, but only that they may be morally irrational due to significant mental impairment. On the other hand there are mental conditions that exclude choosing, like a tic or an irresistible impulse.

 

[Jarhyn]

It just doesn't come through in your posts

Hey man, I'm an autistic 40 year old. I'm not here to teach you, and the experts you list are not actually experts in anything approaching systems theory or neural AI. Here's a hint for you: you need to be able to actually understand it to the level that you can actually build and operate the decision engine to understand what the fuck it is that is actually happening.

I don't think I can explain all that to someone who hasn't the credentials to understand how a simple Turing machine operates, let alone how to construct a Turing machine out of meat.

I'm here to teach other people about how your viewpoint is held religiously. If you want to understand the side of Neural Systems that gets you where you want to be, you need to take at least a course on linear algebra, a course on Machine Architecture, and two or three courses on Machine Learning with at least one being focused entirely on HTM networks.

But I don't have 8 hours a day for a 18 months to do that for you.

is the freely willed choice of the patient?

The primary issue is that no, this is the freely willed decision of some of their cells, but the part in there that is them, the part that does the decision function normally, is having it's will constrained.

In the issue of a broken mind, yes, after the mind has broken and become this new thing, it's will has changed and is perhaps not capable of being as free as it was, but what it does based on that will is done by it. Whether it's will is free is more a matter of whether that will conforms to a model that allows the goals held by the thing to be attained.

Still, you don't need to understand the complexities of how neural systems encode choice functions, one only needs to know deterministic systems may allow choice functions to operate independently in the moment.

It's that whole momentary independent operation of choice function that really sticks the fork in hard determinism (heh, chess/determinism/free will joke).

As I've pointed out, we've taken this to the metal:

I have a machine that I sit in front of for at least a third of every day which contains a plan, a plan translator, a plan execution machine, and an objective model for determining whether that plan will function or not.

Trying to handwave away the realities of this, the existence of "will" of "plan" of "interpreter" of "analysis", by saying "neurons complicated" is cute, but ultimately fruitless.

Now as to the abrogation of free will by internal processes...

So, to actually explain what this means, you need to do the course work... But I'm going to say it and you'll handwave it away because you are not aligned to it's understanding...

HTMs are layered stacks of neurons which can also have far ranging connections to neighboring layers. This is fundamentally how our brain is structured as groupings of interconnected blocks of neurons which form a logical graph structure.

Their primary feature, compared to other neurons often modeled through digital systems, is a refractory period: when one triggers, it will prevent itself and/or neighbors from triggering depending on conditions.

This allows such a thing as having a "first place" and "second place" and even "third place" interpretation of the previous signal by the next "layer" of the stack: a choice function.

It also allows feedback to be made such that in the next layer, evaluation of a layered choice can come back around, and be tested. If the test fails, either additional patterns can be injected into the loop so as to prevent that pattern that won from winning resulting from that state quite so much. This test can either be a simulated or a real event, though the observation of the real event comes through same as the simulation does (mostly).

"Winning" on the layer enables the surface to connect to some secondary surface, translated by the selection neurons, and trigger a reaction, itself formed of a pattern of sparse data sent down the line to somewhere they will be interpreted as "move this way"

the issue here is that once my will has left the network that sends it along, there are other cells in my body I expect to get on with "doing the thing". If some of the neurons between me and there aren't in the mood to send it along, the thing doesn't happen. I made the decision, I had the will, my will was constrained and was not free; I did not move towards my goal nor align upon it.

Sometimes, the damage may be so severe that it breaks some fundamental part of the instruction/interpretation/test cycle, in which case the will itself changes, and all the richness of freedom that the meat has goes away.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Determinism is not merely 'reliable causality' - as if causality is a friend that enables our desires to be realized.

Reliable causation is a prerequisite for accomplishing any intent. Without it, we would be unable to carry out our will. Freedom, especially free will, requires a world of reliable cause and effect.

Determinism allows no alternate actions.

Sorry, but you're overstepping empirical determinism. Determinism doesn't allow or disallow anything. All events, including the appearance of alternate possibilities, are deterministic events, following one upon the other in a string of reliable causes and their effects.

Determinism begins before consciousness; events fix outcome before we even think and act.

That would be empirically false as well. Any event that requires consciousness will necessarily include the event of consciousness among its necessary causes, and the dependent event will not happen without it. We do not get to pick and choose which events are included or excluded from the causal chain.

So, your suggestion that determinism makes consciousness unnecessary, or absent, is not valid within determinism.

What I said is the very definition of determinism. You yourself gave essentially the same definition;
''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.

Yes. And I've yet to see any reason to change anything I've said.

Every option cannot be realizable before you choose the salad. Salad, being determined, was the only option open to you. If the world is determined, the perception of alternatives is an illusion.

Okay, here's what's confusing you. The perception of alternatives is not an "illusion", it is part of the "model" of reality that the brain creates to allow imagination to operate. When the model is accurate enough to be useful, it is called "reality", because it is our only access to reality. It is only when the model is inaccurate enough to create a problem that we use the term "illusion".

All possibilities exist solely within the imagination. We cannot drive a car across the possibility of a bridge. We can only drive across an actual bridge. However, this does not mean that a possibility is "imaginary" or an "illusion". A "possibility" exists as a necessary mental function. It is necessary because we cannot build an actual bridge without first imagining a possible bridge.

Within determinism, a "possibility" is a mental event, and, just like every other event, it is always reliably caused by prior events. (This is a somewhat simplified description, because there will likely be a myriad of brain sub-events involved in each logical use of the notion of that specific possibility). We logically use the notion of a "possibility" as an imagined future event or future state of affairs.

For example, having the steak is one possible future, and, having the salad is another possible future. When choosing, we weigh the benefits and costs of our options, and select the one that we believe will best suit our various interests (taste, dietary goals, price, etc.) in the outcome of the choice.

So, all of the alternative possibilities are actual events within the causal chain.

As you say, 'events proceed without deviation'' If alternate actions could be realized, events would not proceed without deviation, so the world would not be deterministic.

Because all of the alternative possibilities are actual events within the causal chain, they must necessarily proceed without deviation. They are unavoidable. To attempt to avoid them would break determinism. To deny them would falsify determinism.

Given the objections described above, alternate actions are not possible....which means that 'I could have chosen' is a moot point.

The notion of "what I could have done" is also a real mental event. It functions as part of the process of reviewing our actions, especially if our choice did not turn out as we expected. It is how we learn to make better choices in the future.

All of these mental events enable us to deal more effectively with our physical and social environments. So we cannot dismiss them as "moot points". They are how we deterministically operate.

There are no different circumstances within a determined system, where events proceed precisely as determined 'without deviation.'

There are no differences as to what will happen. But we often do not know what will happen, so we invoke the logic and the language of possibilities. When we do not know what will happen, we imagine what can happen, to prepare for what does happen.

If circumstances were different, it would be the different circumstances, both external and internal, that determines your action in that instance and that instance alone. Which is the case in each and every instance as life and the world grind on.

You cannot say that all that stuff determines our actions, as if we were not ourselves part of the stuff doing the determining. All of the internal causation happens to be us! All the internal causes are integral parts of who and what we are at that moment. So, it is truly us, right there, doing most of the causing ourselves.

Within the domain of human influence (things we can make happen if we choose to), the single inevitable future will be chosen, by us, from among the many possible futures that we will imagine.

 

[fromderinside]

Jarhyn writes: Our universe is capable of producing machines capable of taking instructions, and executing behavior on the basis of those instructions, and those instructions are capable of static analysis and even execution on other platforms.

The wills can be assessed as free or constrained. They will either execute and run, or they will not, but moreover they will pass their unit tests or they will not. This is a real property.

We have plans... We have objective evaluation.. we have success criterion...

That's all the ingredients to compatibilist free will right there.

Putting it out there isn't defining. You put it out there that choice is made, that will exists. What is your basis for saying this?

All I can surmise is you need to justify yourself, you be, therefore you think, you choose, you decide. Not necessary. Works just as well when you don't set yourself in judgement.

Rather than trying to build justifications form individual perspectives why not assume it's because it happens in a determined world? No one exerted will no one chose it happened. No consciousness, no mind, no will, no choice just happenings in a determined world.

No need to explain why this happened or that happened, just things happening as seen from some arbitrary point of view in a world where things are determined. From any perspective what happens is seen to be determined by previous conditions.

Do we really need to connect our presence to what happens in any real way beyond making us feel good about what we characterize. Does it explain things or actions in a way that moves our understanding of the world. or does it leave us with a problem explaining how we fit into the world as we think we do?

I suggest it leaves us with this latter problem for which there is little evidence such exists. Take mind out of physics and we are left with physics. Great! I'm pretty sure that if we study things as determined we'll get to explaining how we became to be the physical beings that we are in the physical world.

 

[DBT]

Yes, but the critical point is that you don't choose the state and condition of 'your' brain. The issue here being that it's the unchosen state and condition of the brain that 'chooses' you. You are whatever the brain is doing.

Close enough. It is unnecessary for us to choose the state and condition of our brain, because we ARE that state and condition. Whatever the brain chooses from the restaurant menu, WE have chosen.

If we don't choose our state and condition, yet what we think and what do flows from our non-chosen condition, where is free will?

If our state and condition and all that flows from it is not freely willed means that free will is merely a misapplied label.

And when our brain/ourselves is free to make that choice for itself, without coercion and undue influence, it is a freely chosen intent, commonly known as "free will".

Everything is fine if the brain is functioning normally, producing rational decisions....but what happens when neural networks malfunction. and bad decisions and irrational behaviour is produced?

If the cause of the behavior is a significant mental illness or injury, then we would attempt to correct that cause medically and psychiatrically. And if the behavior poses a threat to others, then the patient would be treated in a secure facility.

The nature of the cause determines the method of correction.
A. The bank teller's behavior of handing over the bank's money to the robber is corrected by removing the coercive threat.
B. The criminally insane person's behavior is corrected medically and psychiatrically.
C. The bank robber's deliberate behavior is corrected by changing how he thinks about robbing banks in his future deliberations.

That wasn't the point, which was that that non-chosen condition determines behaviour, not free will. Nobody chooses to be a sociopath.

Nobody chooses to be poor at something, unable to make rational decisions or behave in self-destructive ways.

Which makes the opposite true, a math's genius didn't choose or construct their own ability, they are born with it, their brain is wired for it, they have the aptitude and build upon it with practice.

Function and ability, not free will.


Condition, not choice determines behaviour.

On the neurology of morals
''Patients with medial prefrontal lesions often display irresponsible behavior, despite being intellectually unimpaired. But similar lesions occurring in early childhood can also prevent the acquisition of factual knowledge about accepted standards of moral behavior.''

Your example demonstrates that an impaired brain is unable to make appropriate decisions because it lacks "factual knowledge about accepted standards of moral behavior". It does not suggest that decisions are not being made, but only that they may be morally irrational due to significant mental impairment. On the other hand there are mental conditions that exclude choosing, like a tic or an irresistible impulse.

Decisions are being made, but no alternative decisions or actions are possible. Form and function, neural architecture, input and memory, not free will, are the drivers. Nothing is being freely willed.

 

[fromderinside]

You read well Skywalker.

 

[DBT]

It just doesn't come through in your posts

Hey man, I'm an autistic 40 year old. I'm not here to teach you, and the experts you list are not actually experts in anything approaching systems theory or neural AI. Here's a hint for you: you need to be able to actually understand it to the level that you can actually build and operate the decision engine to understand what the fuck it is that is actually happening.

Human behaviour is directly related to the form and function of the human brain, not computer hardware or software.

Hence your argument - if you could call it that - is irrelevant to the issue of free will.

The experts that I refer to, quote and cite, are highly qualified in their field.

For example;

Mark Hallett.
''Dr. Hallett is the Chief of the Human Motor Control Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. He went to Harvard Medical School and did his neurology residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital. As part of his training, he was a fellow at NIH from 1970 to 1972. From 1976 to 1984, Dr. Hallett was the Chief of the Clinical Neurophysiology Laboratory at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and worked up to Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. From 1984, he has been at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke where he also served as Clinical Director of NINDS until July 2000. He is past President of the American Association of Electrodiagnostic Medicine and the Movement Disorder Society, past Vice-President of the American Academy of Neurology, and current President of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology and the Brainstem Society. His work mainly deals with principles of motor control and the pathophysiology of movement disorders''



M. Hallett

How Can There Be Voluntary Movement Without Free Will?
''Humans do not appear to be purely reflexive organisms, simple automatons. A vast array of different movements are generated in a variety of settings. Is there an alternative to free will? Movement, in the final analysis, comes only from muscle contraction. Muscle contraction is under the complete control of the alpha motoneurons in the spinal cord. When the alpha motoneurons are active, there will be movement. Activity of the alpha motoneurons is a product of the different synaptic events on their dendrites and cell bodies. There is a complex summation of EPSPs and IPSPs, and when the threshold for an action potential is crossed, the cell fires. There are a large number of important inputs, and one of the most important is from the corticospinal tract which conveys a large part of the cortical control. Such a situation likely holds also for the motor cortex and the cells of origin of the corticospinal tract. Their firing depends on their synaptic inputs. And, a similar situation must hold for all the principal regions giving input to the motor cortex. For any cortical region, its activity will depend on its synaptic inputs. Some motor cortical inputs come via only a few synapses from sensory cortices, and such influences on motor output are clear. Some inputs will come from regions, such as the limbic areas, many synapses away from both primary sensory and motor cortices. At any one time, the activity of the motor cortex, and its commands to the spinal cord, will reflect virtually all the activity in the entire brain. Is it necessary that there be anything else? This can be a complete description of the process of movement selection, and even if there is something more -- like free will -- it would have to operate through such neuronal mechanisms.
The view that there is no such thing as free will as an inner causal agent has been advocated by a number of philosophers, scientists, and neurologists including Ryle, Adrian, Skinner and Fisher.(Fisher 1993)'' - M. Hallett Clinical Neurophysiology,

 

[Jarhyn]

Human behaviour is directly related to the form and function of the human brain, not computer hardware or software

Your claim was not "humans function deterministically". Your claim is "the universe functions deterministically", first off, hence your argument about neurology -- though it is a bad one based on argument from Incredulity -- is irrelevant to the issue of free will.

I just have to show the universe contains plans that may be objectively evaluated which I have.

Your argument from authority is neither convincing nor important, especially when most "experts" you quote disagree with you.

Your claims as to how neurons function or don't does not matter much insofar as you seem to not know. To know that, you would need to take a number of math courses, a number of machine architecture courses, a number of programming courses, a course on compilers and two or three courses specifically about AI and one entirely being about HTMs.

This is because THESE are the things you need to know so as to understand how neurons produce behavior.

Then to get a GOOD grasp, you have to actually take the field of neural connections and weighting Information and use this systemic model to manually build a neural cluster to do a task. That part sucks btw.

If you want one that is Open Source, I suggest looking into Numenta NuPic.CORE, which is fully open-source, if you need an HTM implementation you can study.

Here's a hint as to why this is important: people reverse engineered the function and connectivity model of human neurons to produce this thing.

The reason you need to understand math and computers is that buried in this meat is a computer that functions just that same way as the "artificial" intelligene, albeit with hardware rather than software neurons.

 

[DBT]

Determinism is not merely 'reliable causality' - as if causality is a friend that enables our desires to be realized.

Reliable causation is a prerequisite for accomplishing any intent. Without it, we would be unable to carry out our will. Freedom, especially free will, requires a world of reliable cause and effect.

True on the surface, but causation not subject to will. Whatever happens is determined by elements other than our will. Information processing, not our will is the means of response. Nobody chooses their neural architecture.

Determinism allows no alternate actions.

Sorry, but you're overstepping empirical determinism. Determinism doesn't allow or disallow anything. All events, including the appearance of alternate possibilities, are deterministic events, following one upon the other in a string of reliable causes and their effects.

The appearance of alternative possibilities is not the same as having an alternative possibility in any given instance in time, where only the determined action is possible.

All 'possible' actions being possible in any given instance in time is neither determinism or reliable causation.

Determinism begins before consciousness; events fix outcome before we even think and act.

That would be empirically false as well. Any event that requires consciousness will necessarily include the event of consciousness among its necessary causes, and the dependent event will not happen without it. We do not get to pick and choose which events are included or excluded from the causal chain.

So, your suggestion that determinism makes consciousness unnecessary, or absent, is not valid within determinism.

Not at all, where consciousness exists, consciousness itself is an inseparable part of the determined system and its progression of events.

Consciousness plays its determined role. You can't have it both ways, determinism on the one hand and consciousness being able to buck the system on the other.

What I said is the very definition of determinism. You yourself gave essentially the same definition;
''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.

Yes. And I've yet to see any reason to change anything I've said.

It's a question of what implications 'all events proceeding 'without deviation' has for the idea of free will. Which do not appear to be good.

Every option cannot be realizable before you choose the salad. Salad, being determined, was the only option open to you. If the world is determined, the perception of alternatives is an illusion.

Okay, here's what's confusing you. The perception of alternatives is not an "illusion", it is part of the "model" of reality that the brain creates to allow imagination to operate. When the model is accurate enough to be useful, it is called "reality", because it is our only access to reality. It is only when the model is inaccurate enough to create a problem that we use the term "illusion".

I didn't say that alternate possibilities don't exist in the world, just that only one course of action is possible for any given person in any given instance: the determined action.

That is how determinism works.

As you said, no deviations.

If any apparent possibility was open in any given instance in time, there would be constant deviations. If there are constant deviations, any deviations, we don't have a deterministic system.

If circumstances were different, it would be the different circumstances, both external and internal, that determines your action in that instance and that instance alone. Which is the case in each and every instance as life and the world grind on.

You cannot say that all that stuff determines our actions, as if we were not ourselves part of the stuff doing the determining. All of the internal causation happens to be us! All the internal causes are integral parts of who and what we are at that moment. So, it is truly us, right there, doing most of the causing ourselves.

Within the domain of human influence (things we can make happen if we choose to), the single inevitable future will be chosen, by us, from among the many possible futures that we will imagine.

We are a part of it. The world and its events, biology, environment, society, culture, etc, shape and form us, how we think and act, which in turn affects future conditions as determined, without deviation.

That is the nature of determinism, what we do and the events that follow from our actions is determined. No deviations. We are not talking about a probabilistic or free will system where our choices are contrary to determined actions.

We can't have it both ways. There may be random events in the world, QM, etc, but random is no more an aid for free will than determinism.

 

[Jarhyn]

you don't choose the state and condition of 'your' brain.

Well, you might not. I don't have the issues you seem to have in altering your brain.

Like, there are actually processes you can undergo, entirely self-directed, that have been intensely studied for millennia how to decide aspects of the state and condition of one's own brain.

I don't really care being able to say "that neuron there, you turn on now!" That would be silly.

Now if you don't mind I'm going to go alter the state and condition of my brain by reading something far better written than any of your posts.

 

[DBT]

Human behaviour is directly related to the form and function of the human brain, not computer hardware or software

Your claim was not "humans function deterministically". Your claim is "the universe functions deterministically", first off, hence your argument about neurology -- though it is a bad one based on argument from Incredulity -- is irrelevant to the issue of free will.

Wrong. It has been explained why it is wrong, over and over. The article I just quoted explains it. Your objections are laughable.

I just have to show the universe contains plans that may be objectively evaluated which I have.

Practically anything can be objectively evaluated. It's called information processing. Our brains are information processors. Being information processors, our brains are able to evaluate the available information according to sets of criteria.

The abilities and functions of a brain have absolutely nothing to do with free will. A monkey, dog, rabbit, cat, mouse, etc has no say on what their brain can or can't do, and neither do we.

 

[Jarhyn]

Wrong. It has been explained why it is wrong, over and over. The article I just quoted explains it. Your objections are laughable.

Your religion is laughable. Your religion is based on the naive, yes NAIVE understandings of neural computational theory held by people on the wrong side of the problem.

I told you what you need to understand here, and you fail to jump on it.

I can be a great mechanic, but that means jack shit when the question is "at what pressure and temperature must the gasoline be at to push the piston with this amount of force", because mechanics is not chemistry.

As it is we absolutely do have say over what our brains can and can't do. Just like my brain would previously impulse towards pulling away from a punch, and now it doesn't.

I made a conscientious decision to resist what other parts of my brain were talking me to do until I was strong enough to win against them and stay put. It sucked, it hurt, and I did it anyway.

If you would like to know how, I can teach you, and I wouldn't charge for that, even.

You don't want to think that you or some sociopath or whatever have a choice, or had a choice.

You did, and you have to live with that. I'm sorry that's so hard for you, but you do have a choice. You always have a choice. The choice to suborn one's will to some other mechanism in their own meat they have no direct control over rather than fight it is exactly what makes people sociopaths.

Sometimes people never get the opportunity to learn how to be anything else. Usually I chock this up to a failure of imagination, and even idiotic apologia for hard determinism.

The ability to objectively evaluate the plan as "free to goal" or "does not create freedom to goal" demands that free is an objective property of the will.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

If we don't choose our state and condition, yet what we think and what do flows from our non-chosen condition, where is free will?

That's not the question. The real question this: What are the meaningful and relevant constraints that a person must be free of, in order to decide for themselves what they will do?

A simple example of free will is a person in the restaurant, deciding for themselves what to order for dinner.

Does the person need to be free of their past experience? No, they don't. Their past experiences inform their choice, helping them to find a meal that they know they will enjoy. Or, if they feel like trying something new, it will remind them of what they've already had before. So, their past experience is not a meaningful or relevant constraint.

Does the person need to be free of their genetic dispositions? No, they don't. If they have known food allergies then that knowledge will help them to decide what to choose and what to avoid. But, if they are like most people, they will find most foods acceptable, and they will decide based on their tastes and dietary goals.

Does the person need to be free of causal necessity? Nope, not that either. Causal necessity is not a meaningful constraint, because it is exactly identical to the person being who they are and doing what they naturally do. It's pretty much what you would have done anyway. So, that's not a meaningful constraint upon anything that you do.

If our state and condition and all that flows from it is not freely willed means that free will is merely a misapplied label.

The label "free will" is applied to the conditions under which a person decides what they will do. Was their choice voluntary? Was their choice unforced? Was it their own choice? For example:

Mirriam-Webster on-line: free will 1: voluntary choice or decision 'I do this of my own free will'

Oxford English Dictionary: free will 1. a. Spontaneous or unconstrained will; unforced choice; (also) inclination to act without suggestion from others. Esp. in of one's (own) free will and similar expressions.

Wiktionary: free will: 1. A person's natural inclination; unforced choice.

So, free will, as commonly understood, is when a person decides for themselves what they will do, voluntarily, unforced, and according to their own natural inclination.

Free will is not about the will being some free-floating spirit, untethered to physical reality. That would be the definition of a "soul", not the definition of free will.

In terms of moral and legal responsibility, free will is about who or what is the cause of some action. If a person deliberately committed the act of their own free will, then the person is held responsible for their choice. If a person was forced to commit the act against their will, then the person coercing them is held responsible. If the person had a mental illness that significantly impaired their ability to make a rational moral or legal choice, then the mental illness is held responsible for the action.

I call this first definition the operational definition of free will, and I shorten it to "when a person decides for themselves what they will do while free of coercion and other forms of undue influence". I call it "operational" because this is the meaning that is actually used when assessing responsibility.

Now, each of these dictionaries also has a second definition, very different from the first.

Mirriam-Webster on-line: free will 2: freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention.

Oxford English Dictionary: free will 2. The power of an individual to make free choices, not determined by divine predestination, the laws of physical causality, fate, etc.

Wiktionary: free will: 2. (philosophy) The ability to choose one's actions, or determine what reasons are acceptable motivation for actions, without predestination, fate etc.

This second definition is the philosophical definition, and is summarized as "when a person decides for themselves what they will do while free of causal necessity". The problem with the philosophical definition is that it is a logically impossible freedom, because it requires us to be free of something that (a) does not meaningfully constrain us and that (b) we could not be free of even if we wanted to. So, basically, the philosophical definition is a strawman used to attack the operational definition.

That wasn't the point, which was that that non-chosen condition determines behaviour, not free will.

That "non-chosen condition" you refer to happens to be us, as we are right now. And a lot of it actually was chosen by us as we interacted with our physical and social environment. When it is us, as it usually is, that decides for ourselves what we will do, while free of coercion and undue influence, it is called "free will" (in the meaningful, rational sense).

Nobody chooses to be a sociopath. Nobody chooses to be poor at something, unable to make rational decisions or behave in self-destructive ways. Which makes the opposite true, a math's genius didn't choose or construct their own ability, they are born with it, their brain is wired for it, they have the aptitude and build upon it with practice.

There are lots of things we don't get to choose. There are also lots of things that we do get to choose.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Mark Hallett.
''Dr. Hallett is the Chief of the Human Motor Control Section, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. He went to Harvard Medical School and did his neurology residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital. As part of his training, he was a fellow at NIH from 1970 to 1972. From 1976 to 1984, Dr. Hallett was the Chief of the Clinical Neurophysiology Laboratory at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and worked up to Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. From 1984, he has been at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke where he also served as Clinical Director of NINDS until July 2000. He is past President of the American Association of Electrodiagnostic Medicine and the Movement Disorder Society, past Vice-President of the American Academy of Neurology, and current President of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology and the Brainstem Society. His work mainly deals with principles of motor control and the pathophysiology of movement disorders''

M. Hallett
How Can There Be Voluntary Movement Without Free Will?
''Humans do not appear to be purely reflexive organisms, simple automatons. A vast array of different movements are generated in a variety of settings. Is there an alternative to free will? Movement, in the final analysis, comes only from muscle contraction. Muscle contraction is under the complete control of the alpha motoneurons in the spinal cord. When the alpha motoneurons are active, there will be movement. Activity of the alpha motoneurons is a product of the different synaptic events on their dendrites and cell bodies. There is a complex summation of EPSPs and IPSPs, and when the threshold for an action potential is crossed, the cell fires. There are a large number of important inputs, and one of the most important is from the corticospinal tract which conveys a large part of the cortical control. Such a situation likely holds also for the motor cortex and the cells of origin of the corticospinal tract. Their firing depends on their synaptic inputs. And, a similar situation must hold for all the principal regions giving input to the motor cortex. For any cortical region, its activity will depend on its synaptic inputs. Some motor cortical inputs come via only a few synapses from sensory cortices, and such influences on motor output are clear. Some inputs will come from regions, such as the limbic areas, many synapses away from both primary sensory and motor cortices. At any one time, the activity of the motor cortex, and its commands to the spinal cord, will reflect virtually all the activity in the entire brain. Is it necessary that there be anything else? This can be a complete description of the process of movement selection, and even if there is something more -- like free will -- it would have to operate through such neuronal mechanisms.
The view that there is no such thing as free will as an inner causal agent has been advocated by a number of philosophers, scientists, and neurologists including Ryle, Adrian, Skinner and Fisher.(Fisher 1993)'' - M. Hallett Clinical Neurophysiology,

I would suggest to Dr. Hallet that he look into the brain areas that are involved in planning what the body will be doing if he wants to understand the neural aspects of people deciding for themselves what they will do. My arms and legs do not decide when I should employ them go grocery shopping versus employing them to play the piano.

Hallet is presuming that free will refers to the actions of some non-physical soul or spirit. But that's not what free will is about. Free will is when a person decides what they will do while free of coercion and undue influence. Deciding what we will do is a physical process performed by our physical brains. Hallet is an expert in clinical neurophysiology, which is about how the physiology and neurology of the body accomplishes basic movements. He is apparently not an expert in how the brain performs decision-making and planning.

So, Hallet should remain silent about free will until he studies the brain areas involved in choosing and planning. Right now, despite his keen knowledge of his specialty, he's sounding like someone who is very uninformed about the matters we're discussing.

DBT, I would suggest you confine your quotes to people qualified to speak on the matter of free will. Hallet's opinions on this matter are basically water cooler gossip.