Compatibilism: What's that About?

[Marvin Edwards]

Free will is when our choosing is free of coercion and other forms of undue influence. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Necessitation is being ignored.

Causal necessitation is not being ignored. Reliable cause and effect is always presumed to be the case by everyone. One need not constantly re-assert what everyone takes for granted.

Necessitated actions are not freely willed actions.

It will either be the case that it was causally necessary that you would make the choice yourself, for your own reasons and interests, or it will be the case that it was causally necessary that you would be coerced or unduly influenced, such that you were not free to make the choice for yourself.

Causal necessity is equally present in both cases, which is why it is never necessary to bring it up! Reliable cause and effect is universally presumed to be the case, always. It is perhaps the most trivial fact in the whole universe.

Definitions alone prove nothing.

Again, definitions are not created to prove things. Definitions are meant to help people understand what most people mean when they use a given word or phrase.

I've used three dictionaries to demonstrate that "free will" has two distinct meanings. One meaning is simply a choice we make for ourselves while free of coercion and undue influence. The other meaning is a choice we make while free of causal necessity or fate.

I am using the first meaning. You are using the second. It should help the discussion to understand which "free will" we are talking about.

Neither of us believes that "freedom from causal necessity" is possible. So, the only reason for anyone to use that definition would be to make free will appear to be impossible.

People refer to these things every day, ''thank God that our Janet did well at school,'' ''Let us pray to the Lord....''

There is no mention of God in either definition of free will. Oh, except in your definition, where "divine predestination" is included with causal necessity and fate.

But there is no such nonsense in the first definition.

The issue of free will is related to the role of will, how the brain works and how decisions and actions are made based on science and evidence, not slapping labels onto carefully selected conditions...which is Cherry Picking.

And Cherry Picking would equally apply to "The issue of free will is related to the role of will, how the brain works and how decisions and actions are made based on science and evidence". You are picking the vocabulary of the discussion. Sorry, but that must be negotiated.

The first definition of free will does not require freedom from "how the brain works" or "how decisions and actions are made based on science and evidence". But perhaps your definition requires such a freedom. If so, then that would be another reason to drop your definition.

Free will requires only freedom from coercion and undue influence. Nothing more. Nothing less. We fully expect the decision making to be performed by our physical brains through the rational mechanisms it provides. There is no conflict between the common understanding of free will and neuroscientific evidence.

That doesn't explain the means and mechanisms. It doesn't happen through magic.

Nobody expects neuroscience to find any magic or anything supernatural going on inside the brain. We all expect neuroscience to clarify the means and mechanisms by which a brain goes about choosing from the restaurant menu what we will have for dinner.

Reductionist analysis explains how things work, but it does not 'explain things away'. Choosing what we will do, while free of coercion and undue influence, actually happens in the real world. Neuroscience seeks to explain how the brain accomplishes this function. Neuroscience cannot assert that the event is not happening.

The non-chosen state of the system determines how you think and respond.

You keep leaving out the fact that the non-chosen state of the system also chooses where the person will go and what they will do and what they will think. All of these choices by the 'non-chosen' state alter the state of the system. So, you end up with the system being in a state which is at least partly caused by its own choices. At some point we can no longer assert that the state of the system is entirely 'non-chosen'.

External input alters the brain. Therapy, not free will, alters brain function. The patient seeks help because they are unable to help themselves.

In the case of the criminally insane, the person is subjected to therapy whether they want it or not. But most people choose for themselves to seek therapy, of their own free will, when they feel they are are unable to help themselves.

The causal mechanism of free will is straightforward:
1. The brain encounters a problem that requires it to make a decision, such as the need to choose from the restaurant menu what we will order for dinner.
2. The brain decides, for various reasons, that we will order the Chef Salad.
3. The brain's chosen will, to order the Chef Salad, causes it to trigger the appropriate motor functions to speak to the waiter, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".

Yes, all the work of acquiring and processing information is done unconsciously, the result presented in conscious form.

Remember that the narrator function only has access to the thoughts and feelings that reached conscious awareness. So, the only way it could answer the question, "Why did you choose the salad instead of the juicy steak?" was by having conscious awareness of the thoughts that appeared during my decision making. I recalled having bacon and eggs for breakfast. I recalled having a double cheeseburger for lunch. Therefore I felt it was best to order the salad rather than the steak.

Recognizing a problem, deciding what to do, and acting upon that deliberate intent are all part of the brain's causal agency.

It is both information processing and free will. Information processing is how choosing to order the salad works! And, if I am free to make this choice for myself, then it is a choice of my own free will.

Free will is being inserted into the narrative. ...

Free will makes the practical distinction between a decision I make for myself versus a decision forced upon me by someone or something else. That is why it is a key fact the narrative. If I make the choice of my own free will, the waiter will bring me the bill. If someone forces me to order the steak against my will, then I should not be billed for the steak.

It's really as simple as that.

Determinism doesn't allow alternative.

Determinism allows everything that actually happens. It cannot disallow selected events without ceasing to be determinism.

The intention to eat the apple is necessitated, not freely chosen.

Again, necessitation does not exclude freedom from coercion and undue influence. Nor does it exclude coercion. Nor does it exclude undue influence. Causal necessity never excludes anything. It cannot exclude events without ceasing to be causal necessity.

Chosen implies the possibility to have done otherwise ...

The possibility to have done otherwise is as universal as causal necessity. In fact, whenever you see two possible options, it was causally necessary that you would.

Brain activity only takes milliseconds, but as a deterministic system, the world began its inexorable progression of events long before it came to you selecting an apple, with no possible alternate action.

It doesn't matter. In fact, it was causally necessary that I would choose to eat the apple at that precise time and place. And, it was causally necessary that it would be I, and no other object in the entire physical universe, that would make that choice for myself, free of coercion and undue influence. Thus, it was always inevitable that I would make that choice of my own free will.

Considering what ''could have been done otherwise'' is a part of the learning process. It's an exercise in imagination which provides a different outcome in the future.

Exactly!

You can't have it both ways, if the events progress deterministically, there is no possible deviation or alternate action.

There is no "both ways", there is only one reality. Events simply progress deterministically. Even the possibilities and alternatives that come to mind are deterministic events with reliable prior causes. For example, had we not chosen to have dinner at the restaurant before going home, we would not be at the restaurant. But it was inevitable that we would decide for ourselves to go to the restaurant, of our own free will (free of coercion and undue influence). And it was inevitable that each of us would decide for ourselves what we would order for dinner, each according to their own goals and their own reasons. Again, choices made by us and for us, while free of any coercion or undue influence. Thus, it was deterministically inevitable that we would make both decisions of our own free will.

It's really very simple when you think it through.

 

[DBT]

Free will is when our choosing is free of coercion and other forms of undue influence. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Still a declaration based on a carefully crafted definition that evades the mechanisms and means of action initiation.

Necessitation is being ignored.

Causal necessitation is not being ignored. Reliable cause and effect is always presumed to be the case by everyone. One need not constantly re-assert what everyone takes for granted.

The implications of necessitation are being ignored. Namely, if an action is necessitated, it is neither freely willed or freely chosen (there is no alternative).

We, as actors, are not even aware of the underlying process. We have no regulative control in the sense that we could have done otherwise, taken some another option (options that exist for someone else).

That is what compatibilists ignore or casually brush aside.

Necessitated actions are not freely willed actions.

It will either be the case that it was causally necessary that you would make the choice yourself, for your own reasons and interests, or it will be the case that it was causally necessary that you would be coerced or unduly influenced, such that you were not free to make the choice for yourself.

But you don't 'make the choice for yourself' - the system brings you to each specific state, place and time to perform the very action that has been determined to happen, without deviation.

That is determinism.

Determinism is not 'reliable causation' as if events reliably proceed according to what we want. Every action is fixed by the state of the last, which in turn fixes the next.

Brain activity is a physical process, each state evolving into the next, no alternatives.

Definitions alone prove nothing.

Again, definitions are not created to prove things. Definitions are meant to help people understand what most people mean when they use a given word or phrase.

If not just empty Rhetoric, definitions need to relate to something. For instance, people define Satan in order to help 'people understand' evil and the role of rebelling against God and bringing untold suffering to the world.

Is there a Satan (or God), the brightest of God's Angels who rebelled against God as described by believers? Not unlikely. Virtually impossible.

I've used three dictionaries to demonstrate that "free will" has two distinct meanings. One meaning is simply a choice we make for ourselves while free of coercion and undue influence. The other meaning is a choice we make while free of causal necessity or fate.

Dictionaries reflect common usage, that's all. Useful to a point, but are not going to settle philosophical debates or establish the status of physical processes in terms of 'free will.'

That is for neuroscience to resolve, and it's not looking good for anything that may be called 'free will.'

I am using the first meaning. You are using the second. It should help the discussion to understand which "free will" we are talking about.

Neither of us believes that "freedom from causal necessity" is possible. So, the only reason for anyone to use that definition would be to make free will appear to be impossible.

What does the term 'freedom of will' mean, if not the freedom to choose something from a set of realizable options? That any one of the options could have been chosen....yet that is the very thing that determinism does not allow. Where only the determined option is necessitated, not freely chosen.

An action that was determined before the selection process even began.

That alone falsifies the notion of freedom of will. Will has no freedom within a determined system.

Which forces Compatibilists to word their definition as ''free of coercion and other forms of undue influence'' while ignoring antecedents, that not only 'influence' choices but set or fix all actions before they are even carried out (as per your own definition of determinism).

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Free will is when our choosing is free of coercion and other forms of undue influence. Nothing more. Nothing less.

The implications of necessitation are being ignored.

Causal necessity implies that every event is reliably caused by prior events. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Namely, if an action is necessitated, it is neither freely willed or freely chosen (there is no alternative).

Since we both believe that there is no "freedom from causal necessity", we must assume that "freely willed" or "freely chosen" refer to the first definition of free will and not the second.

Free will is when we choose for ourselves what we will do while free of coercion and other forms of undue influence. Nothing more. Nothing less.

We, as actors, are not even aware of the underlying process.

How much awareness of the underlying processes is necessary to do what we want to do? We can learn to hit a baseball with a bat through trial and error, without any awareness of underlying processes. If we decide that we want to get better at baseball, there are books and YouTube videos that will make us more aware of the underlying processes. If we decide that we want to understand the physics of hitting the ball, we can take a Physics course that will give us an understanding of those processes as well.

If we choose to do something, then we only need sufficient awareness of the processes to get it done.

We have no regulative control in the sense that we could have done otherwise, taken some another option (options that exist for someone else).

We could have played basketball rather than baseball. In fact, Michael Jordan retired from basketball temporarily to play baseball for a while. There is always something else that we could have done, other than what we did.

The brain performs executive functions that provide us with regulative control over what we choose to do. The Wikipedia article describes these as:

Executive functions include basic cognitive processes such as attentional control, cognitive inhibition, inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Higher-order executive functions require the simultaneous use of multiple basic executive functions and include planning and fluid intelligence (e.g., reasoning and problem-solving).[1][2][3]

But you don't 'make the choice for yourself' - the system brings you to each specific state, place and time to perform the very action that has been determined to happen, without deviation.

Dualism again? I am the neurological system that is choosing to have the salad rather than the steak for dinner. While I cannot explain the details of my neurons firing as they accomplish this decision making function, neither can you point out any other object in the physical universe that ordered the salad for dinner.

Determinism means that it was causally necessary, from any prior point in time, that I would be deciding for myself, according to my own goals and my own reasons, that the salad would be a better choice for me than the steak tonight.

That is determinism.

If not just empty Rhetoric, definitions need to relate to something. For instance, people define Satan in order to help 'people understand' evil and the role of rebelling against God and bringing untold suffering to the world. Is there a Satan (or God), the brightest of God's Angels who rebelled against God as described by believers? Not unlikely. Virtually impossible.

Dictionaries do not care what people believe. Dictionaries have no ulterior motives. Dictionaries do not create entities by defining them.

Finding "free will" in the dictionary does not suggest that it exists or doesn't exist. It just tells you how most people understand what you mean when you use the term.

I've pointed out to you that there are two distinct understandings as to what the term "free will" means. One meaning of free will is simply an unforced or voluntary choice that someone makes for themselves. Another meaning is freedom from causal necessity, divine predestination, or fate, etc.

I'm using the first definition. You're using the second. I've defended the meaning of free will found in the first definition. And I've shown it to be compatible with causal necessity.

But rather than acknowledging this, you keep attempting to revert to the second definition, because that is the only definition that you can successfully attack.

That is for neuroscience to resolve, and it's not looking good for anything that may be called 'free will.'

Neuroscience is rejecting the notion of a soul, separate from the body, which provides executive control independent of the brain. They are rejecting the second definition of free will. At the same time, they are confirming the executive control provided by the brain itself, by its decision making function. And that is the first definition of free will, the operational definition, the one used to assess a person's responsibility for their deliberate actions.

What does the term 'freedom of will' mean, if not the freedom to choose something from a set of realizable options?

What does the neuroscience term 'decision making' mean, if not choosing one thing from a set of realizable options?

That any one of the options could have been chosen....yet that is the very thing that determinism does not allow.

But determinism must not disallow the common understanding of "could have been chosen". The logic by which we understand the notion of 'decision making' requires that there be at least two things that we can choose.

And that will always leave us with the (1) single inevitable thing that we will choose, (2) plus at least one other thing that we could have chosen, but didn't.

An action that was determined before the selection process even began.

Actually no. The action will be theoretically "predictable" before the selection process even begins. But the action will never be "caused" until its final prior causes have played themselves out. If something has already been caused to happen, then it has already happened. And nothing ever happens before it happens.

Which forces Compatibilists to word their definition as ''free of coercion and other forms of undue influence'' while ignoring antecedents, that not only 'influence' choices but set or fix all actions before they are even carried out (as per your own definition of determinism).

I'll say it again: No antecedent causes are ignored by compatibilism. Only hard determinists ignore antecedent causes, specifically the act of deliberation that is the final responsible cause of the deliberate act.

 

[Jarhyn]

Some religious adherents of particular religions, apologists for their faith and I know this because I was one of the people in the room being so lectured, espouse a particularly  dishonest and fallacious but also persistent form of argumentation.

It is "were you there?".

The way this argument works is that they might demand, before believing anything about physics at all, that you show them the Grand Unifying Theory of Everything.

And then they would still call  that god and claim  that wrote their holy book.

And in a way they would be right. But that would mean it also wrote every  other holy book  too, even the ones that instruct folks to wipe their asses with the first apologist's holy book, and toss the used paper in the first apologist's yard...

The normal application of this argument is instructed against Evolution arguments: to claim that the story of evolution is less valid because "the evolutionists" have no old documents claiming first hand account, and can't show them evolution and life ex nihlo happening.

But only because it's impossible to get a lab clean enough for long enough to do that in any reasonable way, now that all this life happens to exist up in this bitch.

This form of argument is being used here, in this thread: we have some arguments which essentially amount to "you can't show me how neurons make algorithms and I won't even try to learn if you could", or in other words "You Weren't There".

Of course, I can make structures of matter that do exhibit the qualities that they claim may not possibly exist, and have, and pointed out how they can do this for themselves, and how they may in various ways validate that the structure of the matter has the quality they claim does not exist and observe the events step by step wherein the requirement is met or missed, to step through the very instruction so to see what is being discussed!

I can show the hard creationist the mutation happening, and it's effect on the cell and it's reproductive success, and show them the common relationship through time and emergence of traits from the organization along with tagging of ancient virii that isolate a path of common descent back to single celled life. But still they ask "were you there? My book says otherwise and claims to be an original account"

I can tell the hard determinist how, exactly, to go there and watch with their own eyes to see how and even why the will is "free", how it is "constrained" and what are meant by these things. Again they say "but were you there, do you know exactly how neurons come together into algorithms? Can you prove algorithms can come together into an algorithm shaped unto some encoded requirement?"

Of course not, it's a lot of work and I have a day job.

Even so, I am under no real obligation to take anyone there, and while you can lead Candide through a long sordid story about how idiotic hard determinism is, it takes all of that long story of idiotic twists and turns to make him think, and the reader may not be so lucky as to get a clue.

The fact is, we as a species didn't need to see DNA to pick up Darwin and accept that life evolves, and evolved from a common ancestor. Well, some of us did... And then the better of us understood that "if life evolves there is a mechanism so let's find it because it's probably really fucking cool and we can probably do some really gnarly shit with it".

We shouldn't need to see the exact mechanism of demonstration of exactly  how neural systems create, of their threshold-operated decision engines, the algorithm. We shouldn't need to see a y of it to recognize that it is roughly of the form that may be assembled and recognized as a series of  instructions unto a requirement and that this  requirement will have a threshold by which it is met or missed.

This is what a will is, and how the requirement resolves determines the freedom of the will.

Eventually we will be able to describe in language how to construct an algorithm into a neural configuration, and reverse engineer the algorithms and processes buried in an existing neural configuration into a description of language.

Until we do that, I present an object of it's structure observably containing such a relationship within the paltry limits of a classic Turing machine.

 

[fromderinside]

Your presumptions 1 and 2 are so far from the way neurons work.

No, they aren't. Your inability to grasp that neurons are machines that can be assembled to evoke specific behavior is your failure.

Assembling algorithms with purpose is entirely attainable in neural structures it just has not been done yet, in the same way as assembling an algorithm in hardware with an FPGA is a thing.

Your incredulity with the idea that neural structures can be designed does no insult to the design, though.

Its obviously subjective because the basis you describe is fiction, not real, not how or what neurons do. Oh sure there are action potentials

You don't know what it is that I'm describing because the fact is, I don't really expect you to know any of the things you claim to.

Your argument from incredulity does nothing to the reality of what is clearly attainable though.

I don't think you have ever really looked into how neurons create switching behavior, how an algorithm emerges from that mess, and that's all the more pity for you.

You look into the features of a neuron, but sadly you don't look into the organizational model and what impact these alterations have on the timings, activation weights, Connection weights, and thus the graph behavior of the system.

Always the research scientist asking "what is it" rather than "how does behavior arise from this configuration of matter?"

You don't seem to understand how neurons produce behavior, and while that's fine it does not much make sense to claim that they can't do things given the fact that a neural network can implement any behavior of a classic Turing machine.

But moreover, the neuron is an object, made of some lipids, some protein, some ion channels, some enzymes and some bits that react to and emit neurotransmitters.

When someone has thoughts that object changes.

In the same way, the computer is an object. It's just when anyone brings that up you moan and squeal like a stuck pig.

Again, anyone could discover the computer, and completely independently look at it for long enough to discover that it contains a set of very bizarre objects, that have very particular object relationships, one of which is a "will" (although our viewer may use a different word), one of the elements of that will is a "requirement" and in the case of Urist at the door, so to discover that such requirements may be left unmet, and that these are the same things that can be observed by anyone.

Or, I suppose, anyone capable of reverse engineering and mapping a system that lacks it's original symbol definitions and debug information.

Compatibilists would call the latter condition, the one in which Urist fails at the door "unfreeness" as pertains to the will

Still, the structure is there and real, and really composed of objects, even if some of them, like our aforementioned Dwarven Frog is an object that is also an image of a frog.

If you were a plumber you'd argue anything can be fixed/modelled by analogy with a wrench.

 

[bilby]

Your presumptions 1 and 2 are so far from the way neurons work.

No, they aren't. Your inability to grasp that neurons are machines that can be assembled to evoke specific behavior is your failure.

Assembling algorithms with purpose is entirely attainable in neural structures it just has not been done yet, in the same way as assembling an algorithm in hardware with an FPGA is a thing.

Your incredulity with the idea that neural structures can be designed does no insult to the design, though.

Its obviously subjective because the basis you describe is fiction, not real, not how or what neurons do. Oh sure there are action potentials

You don't know what it is that I'm describing because the fact is, I don't really expect you to know any of the things you claim to.

Your argument from incredulity does nothing to the reality of what is clearly attainable though.

I don't think you have ever really looked into how neurons create switching behavior, how an algorithm emerges from that mess, and that's all the more pity for you.

You look into the features of a neuron, but sadly you don't look into the organizational model and what impact these alterations have on the timings, activation weights, Connection weights, and thus the graph behavior of the system.

Always the research scientist asking "what is it" rather than "how does behavior arise from this configuration of matter?"

You don't seem to understand how neurons produce behavior, and while that's fine it does not much make sense to claim that they can't do things given the fact that a neural network can implement any behavior of a classic Turing machine.

But moreover, the neuron is an object, made of some lipids, some protein, some ion channels, some enzymes and some bits that react to and emit neurotransmitters.

When someone has thoughts that object changes.

In the same way, the computer is an object. It's just when anyone brings that up you moan and squeal like a stuck pig.

Again, anyone could discover the computer, and completely independently look at it for long enough to discover that it contains a set of very bizarre objects, that have very particular object relationships, one of which is a "will" (although our viewer may use a different word), one of the elements of that will is a "requirement" and in the case of Urist at the door, so to discover that such requirements may be left unmet, and that these are the same things that can be observed by anyone.

Or, I suppose, anyone capable of reverse engineering and mapping a system that lacks it's original symbol definitions and debug information.

Compatibilists would call the latter condition, the one in which Urist fails at the door "unfreeness" as pertains to the will

Still, the structure is there and real, and really composed of objects, even if some of them, like our aforementioned Dwarven Frog is an object that is also an image of a frog.

If you were a plumber you'd argue anything can be fixed/modelled by analogy with a wrench.

If YOU were a plumber, you would understand that that was true.

 

[fromderinside]

Your presumptions 1 and 2 are so far from the way neurons work.

No, they aren't. Your inability to grasp that neurons are machines that can be assembled to evoke specific behavior is your failure.

Assembling algorithms with purpose is entirely attainable in neural structures it just has not been done yet, in the same way as assembling an algorithm in hardware with an FPGA is a thing.

Your incredulity with the idea that neural structures can be designed does no insult to the design, though.

Its obviously subjective because the basis you describe is fiction, not real, not how or what neurons do. Oh sure there are action potentials

You don't know what it is that I'm describing because the fact is, I don't really expect you to know any of the things you claim to.

Your argument from incredulity does nothing to the reality of what is clearly attainable though.

I don't think you have ever really looked into how neurons create switching behavior, how an algorithm emerges from that mess, and that's all the more pity for you.

You look into the features of a neuron, but sadly you don't look into the organizational model and what impact these alterations have on the timings, activation weights, Connection weights, and thus the graph behavior of the system.

Always the research scientist asking "what is it" rather than "how does behavior arise from this configuration of matter?"

You don't seem to understand how neurons produce behavior, and while that's fine it does not much make sense to claim that they can't do things given the fact that a neural network can implement any behavior of a classic Turing machine.

But moreover, the neuron is an object, made of some lipids, some protein, some ion channels, some enzymes and some bits that react to and emit neurotransmitters.

When someone has thoughts that object changes.

In the same way, the computer is an object. It's just when anyone brings that up you moan and squeal like a stuck pig.

Again, anyone could discover the computer, and completely independently look at it for long enough to discover that it contains a set of very bizarre objects, that have very particular object relationships, one of which is a "will" (although our viewer may use a different word), one of the elements of that will is a "requirement" and in the case of Urist at the door, so to discover that such requirements may be left unmet, and that these are the same things that can be observed by anyone.

Or, I suppose, anyone capable of reverse engineering and mapping a system that lacks it's original symbol definitions and debug information.

Compatibilists would call the latter condition, the one in which Urist fails at the door "unfreeness" as pertains to the will

Still, the structure is there and real, and really composed of objects, even if some of them, like our aforementioned Dwarven Frog is an object that is also an image of a frog.

If you were a plumber you'd argue anything can be fixed/modelled by analogy with a wrench.

If YOU were a plumber, you would understand that that was true.

No-ah your ship arrived none too soon. Beam me up?

 

[fromderinside]

Your presumptions 1 and 2 are so far from the way neurons work.

No, they aren't. Your inability to grasp that neurons are machines that can be assembled to evoke specific behavior is your failure.

Assembling algorithms with purpose is entirely attainable in neural structures it just has not been done yet, in the same way as assembling an algorithm in hardware with an FPGA is a thing.

Your incredulity with the idea that neural structures can be designed does no insult to the design, though.

Assembly and design are not included in evolutionary theory.

There is no designing hand in evolution.

To wit:

The Basic Process of Evolution​

The basic theory of evolution is surprisingly simple. It has three essential parts:

• It is possible for the DNA of an organism to occasionally change, or mutate. A mutation changes the DNA of an organism in a way that affects its offspring, either immediately or several generations down the line.
• The change brought about by a mutation is either beneficial, harmful or neutral. If the change is harmful, then it is unlikely that the offspring will survive to reproduce, so the mutation dies out and goes nowhere. If the change is beneficial, then it is likely that the offspring will do better than other offspring and so will reproduce more. Through reproduction, the beneficial mutation spreads. The process of culling bad mutations and spreading good mutations is called natural selection.
• As mutations occur and spread over long periods of time, they cause new species to form. Over the course of many millions of years, the processes of mutation and natural selection have created every species of life that we see in the world today, from the simplest bacteria to humans and everything in between.

Billions of years ago, according to the theory of evolution, chemicals randomly organized themselves into a self-replicating molecule. This spark of life was the seed of every living thing we see today (as well as those we no longer see, like dinosaurs). That simplest life form, through the processes of mutation and natural selection, has been shaped into every living species on the planet.

Therefore the facts presented in the articles I cited stand. That you can get something out of neuronal synaptic transmission you call machine from cells evolution of nervous system functions falls far short of what the result of nervous system evoluton produces.

 

[Jarhyn]

Your presumptions 1 and 2 are so far from the way neurons work.

No, they aren't. Your inability to grasp that neurons are machines that can be assembled to evoke specific behavior is your failure.

Assembling algorithms with purpose is entirely attainable in neural structures it just has not been done yet, in the same way as assembling an algorithm in hardware with an FPGA is a thing.

Your incredulity with the idea that neural structures can be designed does no insult to the design, though.

Assembly and design are not included in evolutionary theory.

There is no designing hand in evolution.

To wit:

...

Therefore the facts presented in the articles I cited stand. That you can get something out of neuronal synaptic transmission you call machine from cells evolution of nervous system functions falls far short of what the result of nervous system evoluton produces.

Wow, would you like some dressing with that salad?

I mean, the fact is, you are making a massive argument from incredulity and arm flailing like a wacky arm flailing inflatable tube man.

The fact that you are incredulous how a human being could reverse engineer description of function from a neural graph, and engineer an objective function into a neural graph offers no injury to the fact that this can be done.

You APPEAR to believe there is no way to make any sense at all of the behavior of such complicated systems.

Which is nonsense: the neural graph structure is nothing more than a complicated object and can be understood on that basis as to the general function of such systems.

As it is, again, your incredulity does no injury to the reality that they can be designed.

I didn't say there was a designing hand in evolution... Although there are many designing hands, and minds, in human education and neural conditioning.

Even so, evolution has no bearing on the discussion. The origin of a system has no bearing on what the system happens to be, just so, in this moment. Important concepts to assimilate that may help you understand this better are "there is nothing outside the text" and "death of the author".

While traditionally applied to the written word, these concepts have great value in systems theory so as to avoid foolishness such as declaring objects like computers to not be simply because you happen to know some trivia of how it got there.

I am not talking about evolution.

I am talking about a human with the power to manually and precisely assemble neurons into arbitrary functional relationships so as to evoke algorithms, and to disassemble extant neural networks and extract descriptions of Algorighm, so as to show idiots that neurons can (and already do) execute arbitrary algorithms, much like an FPGA.

While between generations the system cannot retain these changes (they can through the product of human design: education), between the bookends of a person's own life they as individuals accomplish great feats of design, both of themselves and of the world around them.

But moreover, the support neural structures have for hosting algorithmic systems means that they already can do anything a dwarf can do and then a lot more. And a dwarf has a will, observably as an object. And that will, observably has a requirement... And we can observe whether that requirement is being met at any given point in time.

Again, your incredulity at what neurons can and absolutely do accomplish (execution of behavioral algorithm) deals no injury to the observable existence of wills, or to the existence of their freedom property.

 

[DBT]

Free will is when our choosing is free of coercion and other forms of undue influence. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Still a declaration. Given a deterministic system, all actions are necessitated, not freely chosen. Necessitation, fixed outcomes, being the ultimate in 'influence' - which of course negates the given definition of free will.

The implications of necessitation are being ignored.

Causal necessity implies that every event is reliably caused by prior events. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Not merely 'reliably caused,' but all outcomes set according to prior states of the system.

Namely, if an action is necessitated, it is neither freely willed or freely chosen (there is no alternative).

Since we both believe that there is no "freedom from causal necessity", we must assume that "freely willed" or "freely chosen" refer to the first definition of free will and not the second.

What is being freely willed? Prior states of the system evolving into current and future states of the system is not a matter of free will.

Free will is when we choose for ourselves what we will do while free of coercion and other forms of undue influence. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Not according to the given terms of determinism.

We, as actors, are not even aware of the underlying process.

How much awareness of the underlying processes is necessary to do what we want to do? We can learn to hit a baseball with a bat through trial and error, without any awareness of underlying processes. If we decide that we want to get better at baseball, there are books and YouTube videos that will make us more aware of the underlying processes. If we decide that we want to understand the physics of hitting the ball, we can take a Physics course that will give us an understanding of those processes as well.

We don't choose what we want to do. That is determined by the evolving state of the system. An interaction of environment and brain activity....which we as conscious beings cannot access or regulate.

The state of the brain is the state of us.

If we choose to do something, then we only need sufficient awareness of the processes to get it done.

Events choose us as they progress from time t. That is the nature of determinism.

You have agreed with these terms.

We have no regulative control in the sense that we could have done otherwise, taken some another option (options that exist for someone else).

We could have played basketball rather than baseball. In fact, Michael Jordan retired from basketball temporarily to play baseball for a while. There is always something else that we could have done, other than what we did.

Whatever Michael Jordan did was determined by events as they progressed over his career, while he was playing basketball, he was not playing baseball, while he was playing baseball, he was not playing basketball.

Determinism doesn't allow alternative actions. The circumstances and events of his life unfolded precisely as determined.

The brain performs executive functions that provide us with regulative control over what we choose to do. The Wikipedia article describes these as:

Executive functions include basic cognitive processes such as attentional control, cognitive inhibition, inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Higher-order executive functions require the simultaneous use of multiple basic executive functions and include planning and fluid intelligence (e.g., reasoning and problem-solving).[1][2][3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions#cite_note-Executive_functions_2008_review-3

Executive function is not a matter free will, the PFC is a higher order information processor. Information processing does not allow alternate actions or the type of regulative control needed to claim free will.

But you don't 'make the choice for yourself' - the system brings you to each specific state, place and time to perform the very action that has been determined to happen, without deviation.

Dualism again? I am the neurological system that is choosing to have the salad rather than the steak for dinner. While I cannot explain the details of my neurons firing as they accomplish this decision making function, neither can you point out any other object in the physical universe that ordered the salad for dinner.

Not dualism, just that the right kind of regulative control is lacking. Being without control over brain state or outcome is hardly the stuff of free will.

The non-chosen state of the brain is the state of us;

''A new study provides a novel theory for how delusions arise and why they persist. NYU Langone Medical Center researcher Orrin Devinsky, MD, performed an in-depth analysis of patients with certain delusions and brain disorders revealing a consistent pattern of injury to the frontal lobe and right hemisphere of the human brain. The cognitive deficits caused by these injuries to the right hemisphere, leads to the over compensation by the left hemisphere of the brain for the injury, resulting in delusions. The article entitled "Delusional misidentifications and duplications: Right brain lesions, left brain delusions" appears in the latest issue of the journal of Neurology.

''Problems caused by these brain injuries include impairment in monitoring of self, awareness of errors, and incorrectly identifying what is familiar and what is a work of fiction," said Dr. Devinsky, professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Neurosurgery and Director of the NYU Epilepsy Center at NYU Langone Medical Center. "However, delusions result from the loss of these functions as well as the over activation of the left hemisphere and its language structures, that 'create a story', a story which cannot be edited and modified to account for reality. Delusions result from right hemisphere lesions, but it is the left hemisphere that is deluded."

Determinism means that it was causally necessary, from any prior point in time, that I would be deciding for myself, according to my own goals and my own reasons, that the salad would be a better choice for me than the steak tonight.

That is determinism.

Yet, according to the given definition, you are not ''deciding for yourself'' - the implication of determinism is that the system 'decides' all actions as they evolve from prior to current and future states.

Nothing is decided.

Everything is determined.

Because events evolve as determined, prior states evolving into current and future states, you are not ''deciding for yourself'' - which falsifies compatibilism and demonstrates that free will is not compatible with determinism.

 

[pood]

Here’s an example of compatibilist free will in action.

I had more or less given up posting in this thread because it keeps going round and round in circles, DBT repeatedly voicing the same old fallacies, such the inability to distinguish between “will” and “must” and a misunderstanding of the term “natural law.” I thought, why bother adding more fuel to a fire that ought long ago to have been put out?

It is true enough to say, in a certain sense, that my tiring of the repetitiveness of this thread “caused” me to pull back from posting in it. But there are different senses of the meaning of the word “caused,” as there are for so many words. In this case, in a gigantic non sequitur, the hard determinist construes the meaning of “caused” to essentially say that the Big Bang caused me to pull back from posting here. Really, isn’t that crazy? The Big Bang, which wasn’t even sentient, is suddenly empowered with the God-like ability to impose Calvinistic predestination!

But the compatibilist, quite sensibly, uses a common-sense, operational definition of “caused.” It is simply that immediate antecedent circumstances (i.e., thread repetitiveness) “caused” me to reevaluate the efficacy of further participation here. In this sense, “caused” can never mean forced, coerced, or necessitated, but merely influenced. Yes, there is only one history, and in this one history, I recently pulled back from posting because antecedent circumstances (in the operational sense) “caused” me to pull back from posting. Could I have chosen differently, could I have not pulled back from posting? Of course, if antecedent circumstances had been different — if, for example, the thread had not gone into a repetitive rut and had featured more variety. Or, suppose antecedent circumstances were the same, but my brain states were different — then I might have continued to post because the thread’s repetitiveness failed to bore me. And so on.

In contrast, my computer screen, because it is not sentient and has no ability to choose, will always display the pixels on this screen provided the screen is turned on. Indeed, the screen has no capacity to be tired of this thread, and thus no reason to “turn it off” even if it possessed the power to do so. But humans (and other animals) DO have that power — to decide to modify or change their course of action according to circumstances as they develop. The hard determinist says we lack that power — that in essence we are no different from a computer screen or a rock rolling down the hill, and all events trace back to the Big Bang. Yet any normal person not seduced by the quasi-religious bafflegab of hard determinism will, without a second thought, distinguish human behavior from a rock rolling down a hill or a computer screen displaying pixels.

ETA: Yay, this is post 666 here! I am officially evil!

 

[Jarhyn]

Here’s an example of compatibilist free will in action.

I had more or less given up posting in this thread because it keeps going round and round in circles, DBT repeatedly voicing the same old fallacies, such the inability to distinguish between “will” and “must” and a misunderstanding of the term “natural law.” I thought, why bother adding more fuel to a fire that ought long ago to have been put out?

It is true enough to say, in a certain sense, that my tiring of the repetitiveness of this thread “caused” me to pull back from posting in it. But there are different senses of the meaning of the word “caused,” as there are for so many words. In this case, in a gigantic non sequitur, the hard determinist construes the meaning of “caused” to essentially say that the Big Bang caused me to pull back from posting here. Really, isn’t that crazy? The Big Bang, which wasn’t even sentient, is suddenly empowered with the God-like ability to impose Calvinistic predestination!

But the compatibilist, quite sensibly, uses a common-sense, operational definition of “caused.” It is simply that immediate antecedent circumstances (i.e., thread repetitiveness) “caused” me to reevaluate the efficacy of further participation here. In this sense, “caused” can never mean forced, coerced, or necessitated, but merely influenced. Yes, there is only one history, and in this one history, I recently pulled back from posting because antecedent circumstances (in the operational sense) “caused” me to pull back from posting. Could I have chosen differently, could I have not pulled back from posting? Of course, if antecedent circumstances had been different — if, for example, the thread had not gone into a repetitive rut and had featured more variety. Or, suppose antecedent circumstances were the same, but my brain states were different — then I might have continued to post because the thread’s repetitiveness failed to bore me. And so on.

In contrast, my computer screen, because it is not sentient and has no ability to choose, will always display the pixels on this screen provided the screen is turned on. Indeed, the screen has no capacity to be tired of this thread, and thus no reason to “turn it off” even if it possessed the power to do so. But humans (and other animals) DO have that power — to decide to modify or change their course of action according to circumstances as they develop. The hard determinist says we lack that power — that in essence we are no different from a computer screen or a rock rolling down the hill, and all events trace back to the Big Bang. Yet any normal person not seduced by the quasi-religious bafflegab of hard determinism will, without a second thought, distinguish human behavior from a rock rolling down a hill or a computer screen displaying pixels.

ETA: Yay, this is post 666 here! I am officially evil!

I will note that I don't accept any fundamental difference between the usage of "will" as pertains to rocks and computers and whatnot as pertains to it's usage in discussing people.

The terms are just reapplications of "algorithm" and "return code".

It just happens here, in people, the algorithm is much more complicated on account of the fact that as you note, for us, the algorithms can change themselves in systematic ways, like (as?) a mutable lambda function.

My own goal in considering this is to figure out more elements of my project in terms of replicating static algorithms in neural architectures so that they may be made dynamic, specifically inspiring thought exercise into the functional elements of a fully realized "pile of algorithms that does stuff because it wants to".

I can worry about making it fast when I make it in hardware.

 

[fromderinside]

Your presumptions 1 and 2 are so far from the way neurons work.

No, they aren't. Your inability to grasp that neurons are machines that can be assembled to evoke specific behavior is your failure.

Assembling algorithms with purpose is entirely attainable in neural structures it just has not been done yet, in the same way as assembling an algorithm in hardware with an FPGA is a thing.

Your incredulity with the idea that neural structures can be designed does no insult to the design, though.

Assembly and design are not included in evolutionary theory.

There is no designing hand in evolution.

To wit:

...

Therefore the facts presented in the articles I cited stand. That you can get something out of neuronal synaptic transmission you call machine from cells evolution of nervous system functions falls far short of what the result of nervous system evoluton produces.

Wow, would you like some dressing with that salad?

I mean, the fact is, you are making a massive argument from incredulity and arm flailing like a wacky arm flailing inflatable tube man.

The fact that you are incredulous how a human being could reverse engineer description of function from a neural graph, and engineer an objective function into a neural graph offers no injury to the fact that this can be done.

You APPEAR to believe there is no way to make any sense at all of the behavior of such complicated systems.

Which is nonsense: the neural graph structure is nothing more than a complicated object and can be understood on that basis as to the general function of such systems.

As it is, again, your incredulity does no injury to the reality that they can be designed.

I didn't say there was a designing hand in evolution... Although there are many designing hands, and minds, in human education and neural conditioning.

Even so, evolution has no bearing on the discussion. The origin of a system has no bearing on what the system happens to be, just so, in this moment. Important concepts to assimilate that may help you understand this better are "there is nothing outside the text" and "death of the author".

While traditionally applied to the written word, these concepts have great value in systems theory so as to avoid foolishness such as declaring objects like computers to not be simply because you happen to know some trivia of how it got there.

I am not talking about evolution.

I am talking about a human with the power to manually and precisely assemble neurons into arbitrary functional relationships so as to evoke algorithms, and to disassemble extant neural networks and extract descriptions of Algorighm, so as to show idiots that neurons can (and already do) execute arbitrary algorithms, much like an FPGA.

While between generations the system cannot retain these changes (they can through the product of human design: education), between the bookends of a person's own life they as individuals accomplish great feats of design, both of themselves and of the world around them.

But moreover, the support neural structures have for hosting algorithmic systems means that they already can do anything a dwarf can do and then a lot more. And a dwarf has a will, observably as an object. And that will, observably has a requirement... And we can observe whether that requirement is being met at any given point in time.

Again, your incredulity at what neurons can and absolutely do accomplish (execution of behavioral algorithm) deals no injury to the observable existence of wills, or to the existence of their freedom property.

Sorry. You need to point out the text of my incredulity then demonstrate how it is so to be convincing in your accusations. It is not my fault that you are inadequately prepared in neuroscience. Being so is no excuse to make claims you cannot support. You argue without support from the community from which you claim to know what they have and have not accomplished.

The three studies I referenced provide strong evidence for many other forms of encoding and transmission which you completely ignore for the simplistic action potential model of information processing in the the nervous system. We are well prepared on the attributes and capabilities put forth in that model. We are also well informed about models and speculations on neural function among the thousands of types of neurons in the nervous system.

We read and digested Sutherland before you were born and we've followed the progress of those models since. You are not the only one who can program games. My eldest, for one, has been doing so since he appropriated my CoCo in '81.

Your model, Top Down Mechanical, attempt to 'reverse engineer' from insufficient data is astounding. You depend on a model far outdated and include few parameters of even that model then depend on a subset of specific attributes in it's entirety. It neither reflects nor executes as does the nervous system in most any way. You might as well have referenced Fortran. Heck, even in the most rudimentary practical aerospace - my field for thirty odd years mostly after my 15 year experimental methodology career - enterprises top down and bottom up are both required to properly confirm existence and advancement.

That a system can does not imply that a system does or is designed to execute in specific ways. You will need reference specific neural processes if you are going to convince anyone of the merits of your proclamations. That a thing does what it is supposed to do is not proof that the system reflects the the logic presented faithfully. That is subject to experiment.

That you cannot see the value of actual experiment confirms new theory is a shame. Logical exercises as proofs were left behind some six hundred years ago.

Do not respond to this post until you have read and internalized the three experiments posted on neural processes. It will only result in you rehashing your tired and tiring from logic mantras.

And I've tired of reading your groundless proclamations about me and my arguments. I expect only proven - I prefer experimentally demonstrated - point by point replies in the future. If you can't do so then don't even try to respond.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Free will is when our choosing is free of coercion and other forms of undue influence. Nothing more. Nothing less.

... Necessitation, fixed outcomes, being the ultimate in 'influence' - which of course negates the given definition of free will.

Causal necessity is not an undue influence. It is simply how everything normally operates. It applies equally to free will, coercion, ordinary influence, and undue influence.

Free will is not concerned with causal necessity. In fact, free will would be impossible without reliable cause and effect.

Choosing what we will do is a deterministic operation, where the choice is reliably caused by our own goals and our own reasons, as applied by our own brains. Whether the brain does this unconsciously and then communicates it to conscious awareness or whether the brain involves conscious awareness at specific points in the process is irrelevant. It is still us (our own brain) choosing what we will do.

While choosing what we will do, we may be subject to coercion or undue influence, or we may be free of coercion and undue influence. Free will is when we do our choosing while free of coercion and undue influence. It's as simple as that.

Not merely 'reliably caused,' but all outcomes set according to prior states of the system.

The reliability of the causation is the distinction between determinism and indeterminism. Indeterminism would entail a cause whose effect is unreliable, and thus unpredictable. Determinism implies that the effect of a given cause will always be reliable, and thus predictable.

What is being freely willed? Prior states of the system evolving into current and future states of the system is not a matter of free will.

"Freely willed" means that the will was chosen while free of coercion and undue influence. You continue to falsely suggest that free will requires freedom from prior events. No such freedom is required by free will.

We don't choose what we want to do.

But we do choose what we will do about those wants.

Whatever Michael Jordan did was determined by events as they progressed over his career, ...

And, one of those events happened to be Jordan choosing to retire from basketball and give baseball a try.

''A new study provides a novel theory for how delusions arise and why they persist. NYU Langone Medical Center researcher Orrin Devinsky, MD, performed an in-depth analysis of patients with certain delusions and brain disorders revealing a consistent pattern of injury to the frontal lobe and right hemisphere of the human brain. The cognitive deficits caused by these injuries to the right hemisphere, leads to the over compensation by the left hemisphere of the brain for the injury, resulting in delusions. The article entitled "Delusional misidentifications and duplications: Right brain lesions, left brain delusions" appears in the latest issue of the journal of Neurology.

''Problems caused by these brain injuries include impairment in monitoring of self, awareness of errors, and incorrectly identifying what is familiar and what is a work of fiction," said Dr. Devinsky, professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Neurosurgery and Director of the NYU Epilepsy Center at NYU Langone Medical Center. "However, delusions result from the loss of these functions as well as the over activation of the left hemisphere and its language structures, that 'create a story', a story which cannot be edited and modified to account for reality. Delusions result from right hemisphere lesions, but it is the left hemisphere that is deluded."

This was actually interesting because it reminded me of something Michael Gazzaniga said about the interpreter:

... our left brain fudges things a bit to fit into a makes-sense story. It is only when the stories stray too far from the facts that the right brain pulls the reins in. -- Gazzaniga, Michael S.. Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain (p. 77). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

While the left-brain contains the inference engine, the right-brain is more literal. The left-brain specializes in generalization and the right-brain specializes in distinctions, such as facial recognition. Apparently, the right-brain also gives the left-brain feedback when the narrator goes "off the reservation".

The article discusses how lesions in the right-brain prevent it from keeping the narrator honest. The left-brain, with an injured editor, that would normally correct it, produces delusions.

Normally, we expect the narrator to provide a logical explanation of events, but without the right-brain to keep it in line it gets carried away with its story-telling.

And, while we're on the subject of delusions:

Yet, according to the given definition, you are not ''deciding for yourself'' - the implication of determinism is that the system 'decides' all actions as they evolve from prior to current and future states.

Nothing is decided.

Everything is determined.

Because events evolve as determined, prior states evolving into current and future states, you are not ''deciding for yourself'' - which falsifies compatibilism and demonstrates that free will is not compatible with determinism.

Incompatibilists indulge themselves with the delusion that determinism is a causal agent, something that determines what will happen next. After all, if something happens it must be caused by something. But, like a "god of the gaps", they are too ready to plug determinism itself into that role. But determinism never determines anything. Events are determined by actual prior events.

An event is an interaction between two or more objects and forces that produces a change in the state of things. Gravity and a pile of rocks on the side of a mountain may eventually cause a rockslide event. Did determinism do this? No. The mass of the rocks, the force of gravity, and the weakened resistance of the slope caused this event.

The empirical fact is that causation never causes anything and determinism never determines anything. All events are caused by the natural interactions of the actual objects and forces that make up the physical universe.

Anything that is caused is caused by these interactions. Anything that is determined is determined by the interactions of actual objects and forces.

Okay. Now that we've got the empirical facts straight, what about this notion that events are "already determined"? Well, that would be a delusion. Every event is reliably caused by its prior events. And those events will involve specific objects and specific forces.

People happen to be objects that are capable of causing events. People have brains that can consider multiple options and choose a specific thing that they will do.

These decisions are made locally, within the specific brains of specific people. That is where each decision is finally determined. Right there, in that brain, at that time, in that place.

Some other "system" making that choice? Perhaps the universe? Or the Big Bang? No. That would be a delusion.

 

[Jarhyn]

You argue without support from the community from which you claim to know what they have and have not accomplished.

About what exactly? Surely you can hold up a claim, and show a reality empirically counter to it?

The fact is I have been studying not necessarily what process of machine creates an operational neuronal structure, but how to apply an understanding of the behavior of such to assemble it usefully and meaningfully from the top down rather than the bottom up, and the very fact that it can be done, first proven with various exercises in creating various logics from perceptrons demonstrates quite effectively that within the much more richly polymorphic structure of a real neuron, would allow shortcuts in creating much more useful logics such as inverter and nand style behaviors.

Over the last week I've been figuring out how to design such not with a recurrent structure but rather on the foundation of a refractory relationship instead. (A is half refractory to B, B is refractory to A, B is fired by a mutually refractory "clock pair" half behind A's timing, A fires on AND, then B shall be refractory blocked by A, and no output; if A fails to AND, B shall be free to fire, unblocked by A. A will examine once B finishes blocking A).

Of course some experimentation will be necessary to make sure I get the timing structures right, I might have to connect A to B's clock pair, or one of it's clock pair? There are probably ways to harden or soften the structure against back propagation as well.

From my perspective your claims that neurons can't do some particular operation is unconvincing.

Further, your claims that such behaviors are impossible in a deterministic system are laid bare as false owing to the fact that it's been demonstrated happening among transistors and silicon, and it is demonstrably true that the behaviors of silicon and transistors may be fully replicated in any system purely out of NAND structures.

So at least there's that, although doing it purely in NAND would be stupid and unnecessarily complicated.

It's just fucking droll to argue with someone who can't grok that computers are objects, computers demonstrably are capable of the things you claim are utterly impossible, and that we can do much more, of our neurons, than a computer can of transistors.

 

[fromderinside]

You argue without support from the community from which you claim to know what they have and have not accomplished.

From my perspective your claims that neurons can't do some particular operation is unconvincing.

Further, your claims that such behaviors are impossible in a deterministic system are laid bare as false owing to the fact that it's been demonstrated happening among transistors and silicon, and it is demonstrably true that the behaviors of silicon and transistors may be fully replicated in any system purely out of NAND structures.

No. It's my claim that you can't emulate neurons without understanding what neurons actually do with information. The neural model to which you refer is a quaint synaptic one which has been shown deficient for more than 50 years. Read the three articles if you really want to get somewhere in your endeavors.

As to whether human behaviors are impossible depends upon having a complete model of neural information processing from which you construct your little logics rather than your presumptive treatment of what you believe as a basis for your primitive logical constructs and upon putting the rubber on the road in the form of experimental tests. Don't imply some logical presumptions based upon incomplete understanding of neural function and information processing are adequate. The failure is in your understanding of the problem is in the insufficient basis for your models.

I'll give you a hint. Look to how information is passed upstream and downstream and why there are two valences in both directions. Not only is it good for defining boundaries but it does an excellent job of drowning out local metabolic noise. I saw no evidence in your models that you'd accounted for such. Face it. NAND based circuits aren't nearly as noisy as are biological systems and the biological noise reduction would probably overwhelm any choice/will possibilities.

That's three fails on your part.

 

[DBT]

Free will is when our choosing is free of coercion and other forms of undue influence. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Determinism is defined by prior states evolving into current states and future states. Choosing implies the ability to do otherwise.

Determinism doesn't entail free choice.

... Necessitation, fixed outcomes, being the ultimate in 'influence' - which of course negates the given definition of free will.

Causal necessity is not an undue influence. It is simply how everything normally operates. It applies equally to free will, coercion, ordinary influence, and undue influence.

A fixed progression of events with no deviation is far worse for the notion of free will than mere influence.

Free will is not concerned with causal necessity. In fact, free will would be impossible without reliable cause and effect.

Choosing what we will do is a deterministic operation, where the choice is reliably caused by our own goals and our own reasons, as applied by our own brains. Whether the brain does this unconsciously and then communicates it to conscious awareness or whether the brain involves conscious awareness at specific points in the process is irrelevant. It is still us (our own brain) choosing what we will do.

The system - the world, the environment - is made up of more than our our brains. Given determinism, our environment determines what goes on in our brains.

External conditions and inputs act upon the brain more surely than external coercion or influence, which compatibilists acknowledge negates free will.

While choosing what we will do, we may be subject to coercion or undue influence, or we may be free of coercion and undue influence. Free will is when we do our choosing while free of coercion and undue influence. It's as simple as that.

We don't choose. Inputs act upon the brain altering its activity. Determinism: prior states evolving deterministically into current states and future states.

Nothing is freely willed. All events are shaped by prior states of the system.

Not merely 'reliably caused,' but all outcomes set according to prior states of the system.

The reliability of the causation is the distinction between determinism and indeterminism. Indeterminism would entail a cause whose effect is unreliable, and thus unpredictable. Determinism implies that the effect of a given cause will always be reliable, and thus predictable.

We lack the right kind of regulative control to qualify as free will. Nothing is willfully regulated or open to modification.

We are not even aware of what is happening within the brain, only the end result, we feel hungry and ''wouldn't it be nice to go to a cafe and order grilled fish and salad with a glass of wine.....''

What is being freely willed? Prior states of the system evolving into current and future states of the system is not a matter of free will.

"Freely willed" means that the will was chosen while free of coercion and undue influence. You continue to falsely suggest that free will requires freedom from prior events. No such freedom is required by free will.

Nothing was chosen. Information evolved from a prior state to the current state and evolves into a future state.

That's Determinism, not free will. The two don't go together.

We don't choose what we want to do.

But we do choose what we will do about those wants.

Whatever Michael Jordan did was determined by events as they progressed over his career, ...

And, one of those events happened to be Jordan choosing to retire from basketball and give baseball a try.

''A new study provides a novel theory for how delusions arise and why they persist. NYU Langone Medical Center researcher Orrin Devinsky, MD, performed an in-depth analysis of patients with certain delusions and brain disorders revealing a consistent pattern of injury to the frontal lobe and right hemisphere of the human brain. The cognitive deficits caused by these injuries to the right hemisphere, leads to the over compensation by the left hemisphere of the brain for the injury, resulting in delusions. The article entitled "Delusional misidentifications and duplications: Right brain lesions, left brain delusions" appears in the latest issue of the journal of Neurology.

''Problems caused by these brain injuries include impairment in monitoring of self, awareness of errors, and incorrectly identifying what is familiar and what is a work of fiction," said Dr. Devinsky, professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Neurosurgery and Director of the NYU Epilepsy Center at NYU Langone Medical Center. "However, delusions result from the loss of these functions as well as the over activation of the left hemisphere and its language structures, that 'create a story', a story which cannot be edited and modified to account for reality. Delusions result from right hemisphere lesions, but it is the left hemisphere that is deluded."

This was actually interesting because it reminded me of something Michael Gazzaniga said about the interpreter:

... our left brain fudges things a bit to fit into a makes-sense story. It is only when the stories stray too far from the facts that the right brain pulls the reins in. -- Gazzaniga, Michael S.. Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain (p. 77). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

While the left-brain contains the inference engine, the right-brain is more literal. The left-brain specializes in generalization and the right-brain specializes in distinctions, such as facial recognition. Apparently, the right-brain also gives the left-brain feedback when the narrator goes "off the reservation".

The article discusses how lesions in the right-brain prevent it from keeping the narrator honest. The left-brain, with an injured editor, that would normally correct it, produces delusions.

Normally, we expect the narrator to provide a logical explanation of events, but without the right-brain to keep it in line it gets carried away with its story-telling.

The point being, that the narrator function responds deterministically to whatever the brain is doing in terms of response and action initiation, which was determined by its inputs.

Often getting it wrong.

And, while we're on the subject of delusions:

Yet, according to the given definition, you are not ''deciding for yourself'' - the implication of determinism is that the system 'decides' all actions as they evolve from prior to current and future states.

Nothing is decided.

Everything is determined.

Because events evolve as determined, prior states evolving into current and future states, you are not ''deciding for yourself'' - which falsifies compatibilism and demonstrates that free will is not compatible with determinism.

Incompatibilists indulge themselves with the delusion that determinism is a causal agent, something that determines what will happen next. After all, if something happens it must be caused by something. But, like a "god of the gaps", they are too ready to plug determinism itself into that role. But determinism never determines anything. Events are determined by actual prior events.

Nobody has said that ''determinism is the causal agent'' except you and other compatibilists.

Incompatibilists refer to how determinism is defined in terms of the physical interactions of matter/energy on a macro scale, causal determinism, how objects interact causally in a progression of states and events.

I've been repeating this over and over.

It's the very same definition of determinism that you gave.

The difference being, compatibilists try to insert the term 'free will' where it doesn't actually fit.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Determinism is defined by prior states evolving into current states and future states.

That's right.

Choosing implies the ability to do otherwise.

That is also correct.

Determinism doesn't entail free choice.

But what you seem unable to grasp is that the "ability" to do otherwise never requires that we "actually" do otherwise!

When someone says "I could have chosen the steak for dinner" it always implies "I did not choose the steak for dinner" and "I only would have chosen the steak under different circumstances".

There is no contradiction between determinism and the ability to do otherwise!

A fixed progression of events with no deviation is far worse for the notion of free will than mere influence.

A fixed progression of events is how everything, including free will, works.

Consider the fixed progression of events involved in "choosing what we will do". First, we encounter a problem or issue that requires us to make a decision. For example, we must decide what to order for dinner. Second, we consider multiple options in terms of our own goals and our own reasons. Third, we experience thoughts and feelings about each option. Fourth, based on those thoughts and feelings, we choose the option that we believe will give us the best result. Fifth, we act upon that chosen intent, we say to the waiter, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".

That is clearly a fixed progression of events. And, that is clearly a choice we made for ourselves while free of coercion and undue influence.

"Determinism, meet Free Will. Free Will, meet Determinism. I'm sure you're going to like each other."

The system - the world, the environment - is made up of more than our our brains. Given determinism, our environment determines what goes on in our brains.

And that claim would constitute superstitious nonsense. Our environment refers to everything that is outside of us. And our environment never acts upon us with a single intent. Our environment does not choose what goes on in our brain.

Our brain serves our own inner needs. As the plant in the "Little Shop of Horrors" said, "Feed me Seymour!". So, our inner need to have dinner led us to the restaurant. Now that we're here we have to choose what we will order from a menu of alternate possibilities. This process is driven by our own biological need to eat.

External conditions and inputs act upon the brain more surely than external coercion or influence,

Total nonsense. The restaurant menu is not a guy with a gun. And the menu will not select our dinner for us. We still must do that for ourselves.

We don't choose.

Look around the restaurant. Watch what the customers are doing. Do you see them each reducing that menu of many possibilities into a single dinner order? We call that "choosing". What do they call it on you planet?

Inputs act upon the brain altering its activity.

Really? Do you see the menu acting upon the customer's brain? Or isn't it the case that each customer is acting upon the menu, picking it up, reading it, and deciding for themselves what they will have for dinner?

The notion that the menu is acting upon the brain, rather than vice versa, is a delusional distortion of reality.

Determinism: prior states evolving deterministically into current states and future states.

Correct!

Nothing is freely willed.

The intention (will) to order the salad was formed while free of coercion and undue influence. That is all that free will requires.

We lack the right kind of regulative control to qualify as free will.

And yet each person in the restaurant controlled what they would order for dinner.

We are not even aware of what is happening within the brain, only the end result, we feel hungry and ''wouldn't it be nice to go to a cafe and order grilled fish and salad with a glass of wine.....''

Fortunately, we have no need to attend to the neural activity within our brains in order to decide for ourselves what we will have for dinner.

Our brains already come with the ability to make decisions, built in, free of charge.

Nobody has said that ''determinism is the causal agent'' except you and other compatibilists.

You constantly repeat that our actions are determined, but insist that they are not determined by us. That raises the question, "If not by us, then by who or by what?".

Incompatibilists refer to how determinism is defined in terms of the physical interactions of matter/energy on a macro scale, causal determinism, how objects interact causally in a progression of states and events.

And I've laid out the specific progression of states and events involved in decision making. We encounter a problem the requires a decision. We consider our options. We choose what we will do. This is determinism. And, if our choosing is free from coercion and undue influence, then it is also free will.

 

[Jarhyn]

's my claim that you can't emulate neurons without understanding what neurons actually do with information

The sheer amount of not-even-wrong packed into this statement is explosive and mind-boggling.

First off, your obvious straw man: this is not about other systems emulating neurons, so much as neurons "emulating" other systems.

I am not saying Turing machines are effectively being exactly like human neurons; rather I am saying neurons are effectively able to support the algorithms of a Turing machine purely on the fact that all Turing machines can be built in any system that emulates NAND. It is a fact of computational systems, of any system, that if a system can support NAND behavior, that system can be organized to emulate the behavior of any Turing machine.

 This is not in question: All traditional logic gates, truth systems, and state tables can be built from NAND structures.

Second off, your "what they actually do with information bullshit" is so not-even-wrong it's almost physically painful. We have projects like Numenta's Nupic.CORE technology where we have clearly very deeply implemented HTM structures.

The fact is that all it takes is being able to understand how to take what they are, best as we can understand that, and identify the functional relationships that form from specific organizations of them.

Still, it is more about the fact that neurons are the ones doing the "emulating".

The fact that neurons can emulate any behavior of a Turing machine means that anything a dwarf can do in terms of "series of instructions" and testing on "requirement" can, in fact, be done by neural systems.

But moreover the fact that such things can be done observably by and within the structure of the Turing machine invalidates hard determinism entirely because there's the thing you claim is completely and utterly impossible.

 

[fromderinside]

First off, your obvious straw man: this is not about other systems emulating neurons, so much as neurons "emulating" other systems

But moreover the fact that such things can be done observably by and within the structure of the Turing machine invalidates hard determinism entirely because there's the thing you claim is completely and utterly impossible.

OK. Where are the machines? I mean how come machines have not evolved on their own in the world. I see the evolution of nervous systems. The BORG is fiction. Even it was designed by evolved beings supposedly. Where are the NAND or Turing devices both named products of brain activity. After all doped substrates are much more prevalent than cellular structures in the environment and there are lots of ways for energy to drive change.

Oh wait, they're the result of brain activity which is the result of evolution, survival of the fittest, a pretty deterministic system of operation.

As we understand the world now there are no other sentient things detectable in the universe. And we've tried hard to find something.

Puleez. We are the brain that can't be? byee.

I go tipsy to your very lame turvy.

You're so easy because you are an engineer, not a scientist. Scientists ask why not just how.