“Reality Goes Beyond Physics,” and more

[pood]

I don’t particularly wish to revive the long-running free will/determinism debates staged here, unless there are new participants (a defender of libertarianism would be welcome) or old participants who have a fresh angle to offer. That said, I do think for those of us interested in the topic, new insights from others might be welcome. I am pointing to three essays, because I think they are fresh and interesting but mostly because they agree with me. More relevantly, they support specific examples I have given as to why hard determinism fails. Note again that hard determinism is not the whole of determinism but a variant of it; compatibilists are also known as soft determinists.


The essays are:

Reality Goes Beyond Physics

Robert Sapolsky Is Wrong

Efficient, Formal, Material and Final Causes in Biology and Technology.

I’m only going to very briefly summarize the above. Those interested in a discussion will of course read the papers.

The first paper never even mentions determinism or free will, but the debate is implicit in it, and explicated by it. Its main point is: Physics does not determine what happens: the mind/brain does.

This is not to say that the mind/brain is not affected by physics, but rather that the mind/brain has its own agency — perfectly in accord with my long-labored point that the mind/brain is part of the deterministic stream, and not simply falling dominoes set to fall ages hence by the Big Bang.

The author discusses the causal efficacy of abstract entities, or abstract causation, including those found in computers. It discusses the idea of downward causation, completely ignored by the hard determinist, but evident in everyday life, including the examples given in the essay of chess rules and chess playing. Best of all from my point of view, it picks up on an argument I repeatedly made during these discussions: how absurd it is to suppose, as Jerry Coyne did in one of his blog entries, that a jazz improv piece was not actually written by the composer, but by this mythical entity called hard determinism. The comparable example I gave during our varied discussions was how absurd to believe that a great building designed by a brilliant architect was actually designed by the Big Bang.

Rather than go all the way back to the Big Bang, the author invites us to consider how absurd it to believe that my next chess move was encoded at the Last Scattering Surface. He notes there is no conceivable way such information could be so encoded and to conclude it was so encoded is to imagine a form of Last Scattering Surface demiurge, the very sort of dualism that the hard determinist is supposed to be objecting to but seems to endorse without even realizing it. The author likens this sort of hard-determinist misapprehension to a form of intelligent design.

In the second essay, the author dismantles Robert Sapolsky’s biological hard determinism. He points out an essential contradiction at the heart of it: Sapolsky demands an example of even one neuron that has free will. But he goes on to concede that pain is real. The contradiction, the author points out, is this: that if Sapolsky were consistent, he would deny the reality of pain by stating, “If pain exists, show me a neuron that just experienced pain.” But Sapolsky does not recognize the contradiction inherent in his position, which would be like saying, “If water is wet, show me one water molecule that is wet.” This is to say, as the physicist Sean Carroll has repeatedly pointed out, that free will is an emergent phenomenon of various reductionist classes of activities, as wetness is an emergent phenomenon of its molecular substrate.

The final paper considers various forms of causations according to a modern reinterpretation of the Aristotelian explication of causation, recognizing at the outset how problematic it would be to, for example, ascribe any sort of final causation (telos) to realms like biology or cosmology. His basic point is that causation must be specified in terms of variables that come into existence only at different emergent levels.

The part I like best, though, is when he invokes (using a different example) my own example of the difference between what happens if a rock is pushed down a hill and a human is pushed down a hill. I like it best because it agrees with me. My point about the rock and the human pushed down the hill is that the rock’s behavior is (broadly) predictable, as it will be more or less described (not accounting for variations in terrain) by Newton’s “laws” of physics. The human, not so much. Because he has agency, he will struggle to right himself against the fall, whereas the rock, lacking agency, will not.

The author’s own example is reimagining the probably apocryphal story of Galileo dropping two rocks from the Tower of Pisa as Galileo dropping a rock and a pigeon instead. The rock’s fall will be predictable but the pigeon’s will not, precisely because the pigeon has agency.

The author defines free will thus:

In the context of the modular hierarchical structure of human life, with multiple realizability of higher-level functions occurring in the context of huge numbers of molecules at the cellular level in a highly dynamic environment (§2.2) and with humans being open systems, dynamic formal and material downward causation underlie the existence of free will.

And goes on to conclude, invoking Aristotle:

One can propose that the four causes relate to emergence in the following ways:

• Stating that efficient causation occurs at each higher level is essentially the claim that emergence does indeed occur. Novelty arises at each higher level because the nature of efficient causation is different at each emergent level.
• Stating that material causation occurs is essentially stating that supervenience occurs over a material basis.
• Stating that formal causation occurs is essentially the statement that constraints break symmetries and thereby shape outcomes.
• Stating that final causation occurs is a statement that in the case of humans and the abstract and material artefacts they create, purpose and values play a key role in determining outcomes.

I trust any interested in discussing any or all of these papers will read them first.

 

[bilby]

The part I like best, though, is when he invokes (using a different example) my own example of the difference between what happens if a rock is pushed down a hill and a human is pushed down a hill. I like it best because it agrees with me. My point about the rock and the human pushed down the hill is that the rock’s behavior is (broadly) predictable, as it will be more or less described (not accounting for variations in terrain) by Newton’s “laws” of physics. The human, not so much. Because he has agency, he will struggle to right himself against the fall get up, climb back up the hill, and punch you on the nose for having pushed him, whereas the rock, lacking agency, will not.

FTFY.

 

[DBT]

Just curious. Does the emergent property have autonomy? Or are its functions and abilities, attributes and features determined by the interaction of its constituant parts?

 

[bilby]

Just curious. Does the emergent property have autonomy? Or are its functions and abilities, attributes and features determined by the interaction of its constituant parts?

Autonomy IS an emergent property.

The question "Does the emergent property have autonomy" is a category error.

If someone tells you that Rayleigh scattering makes the sky blue, would you ask "Does the blue have a colour?"?

 

[DBT]

Just curious. Does the emergent property have autonomy? Or are its functions and abilities, attributes and features determined by the interaction of its constituant parts?

Autonomy IS an emergent property.

The question "Does the emergent property have autonomy" is a category error.

Are you are saying that an emergent property, a thought for instance, may function independently of the brain that is generating thought?

That thought has autonomy, and somehow is able to think for itself?

That's what seems to be implied by the notion of free will, where there's a kind of emergent property that enables choice, doing what has not been determined within a deterministic system.

Where any such autonomy contradicts the very terms of determinism as compatibilists define it to be.

If someone tells you that Rayleigh scattering makes the sky blue, would you ask "Does the blue have a colour?"?

That's not an analogy.

 

[DBT]

''In the second essay, the author dismantles Robert Sapolsky’s biological hard determinism. He points out an essential contradiction at the heart of it: Sapolsky demands an example of even one neuron that has free will. But he goes on to concede that pain is real. The contradiction, the author points out, is this: that if Sapolsky were consistent, he would deny the reality of pain by stating, “If pain exists, show me a neuron that just experienced pain.” But Sapolsky does not recognize the contradiction inherent in his position, which would be like saying, “If water is wet, show me one water molecule that is wet.” This is to say, as the physicist Sean Carroll has repeatedly pointed out, that free will is an emergent phenomenon of various reductionist classes of activities, as wetness is an emergent phenomenon of its molecular substrate.

It takes more than one neuron to experience pain. It requires a network of neurons, a brain, to generate the experience of pain or thought, a decision or an action in response to an external event, an injury, disease in organs, damage to limbs, nerves, etc.

Compatibilist free will does not entail choosing or doing what has not been determined internally or externally.

''Carroll lets us know which view he holds: he thinks free will is fundamentally an illusion, and the only reason we use "free will" language is because it's useful. And why do we find it useful? Later he writes, "The unavoidable reality of our incomplete knowledge is responsible for why we find it useful to talk about the future using a language of choice and causation" (380). In other words, free will is false at the fundamental level of reality and we only use "free will" language at higher levels because we lack a complete knowledge of the current state of the universe. If, like Laplace's Demon, we knew the positions and velocities of all the particles in the universe, understood all the forces they are subject to, and had sufficient computational power to apply the laws of motion, then we would not use "free will" language—we would agree that everything is determined.''

Is Free Will Real or Are We All Determined?

Throughout Sean Carroll's best-selling book, The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (Dutton, 2016), Carroll seems comfortable holding two apparently contradictory views. This has been show throughout our review series. For example, he's fine both believing that cau

strangenotions.com

 

[bilby]

Are you are saying that an emergent property, a thought for instance, may function independently of the brain that is generating thought?

Yes. But also, no. A thought is a characteristic of a collection of neurons; It requires the neurons in order to exist, but no given individual neuron is thinking.

Brains think; Neurons do not.

That thought has autonomy, and somehow is able to think for itself?

No, the brain is able to think for itself. The thought is a consequence of brain activity. But it's not a part of the brain.

That's not an analogy.

Sure it is; It illustrates your error.

Here's a (perhaps better) analogy:

If you have a chamber divided into two parts, one containing air, and the other a vacuum, and you then open a valve between the two parts, air will rush into the vacuum until the pressure in the two parts is equal.

This is due to the second law of thermodynamics, which says that a system in a low entropy state will move towards a higher entropy state.

The initial state of the chamber is a lower entropy state than the final state of the chamber.

Which air molecule(s), or other component(s) of the chamber had low entropy at the beginning of our experiment?

The answer is that the question is meaningless. Entropy is not a characteristic of any given part of the setup; It is only a characteristic of the system as a whole.

A given Nitrogen or Oxygen molecule doesn't change in any way during this experiment, it just bounces around in accordance with the simple laws of motion, conservation of momentum, conservation of energy, etc. It doesn't have entropy*; The idea of the entropy of a given molecule in the system, as an objective characteristic, is meaningless.

Entropy is only a thing for large aggregates of molecules all doing their own thing. The aggregate has entropy; The parts do not.








* Yeah, I know, that's an oversimplification. Use helium instead of air, if that helps. Or spherical, perfectly elastic and frictionless horses. Your local quantum mechanic should be able to order them from his parts catalogue.

 

[bilby]

It takes more than one neuron to experience pain. It requires a network of neurons, a brain, to generate the experience of pain or thought, a decision or an action in response to an external event, an injury, disease in organs, damage to limbs, nerves, etc.

Exactly. Thank you.

Pain is an emergent property. It's not a property of any part of the system, and cannot be understood by studying the behaviour of each part separately. Same with thought. It may be deterministic, but it isn't determined by the components of the system, but rather by the system as a whole. That's your compatibilism, right there.

Free will is a useful concept. Hard determinism cannot explain creativity, but free will can.

Arguing that hard determinism could explain creativity, if we had perfect knowledge of the entirety of the initial conditions of the whole universe, is just plain dumb - we don't and cannot have such knowledge. Even if that untestable claim were true, it would be useless.

We need not know or care how the components of a system behave, in order to fully understand that system. This is fortunate, because otherwise it would have been impossible for paeleolithic man to craft stone tools, until they had a complete grasp of quantum field theory, which we still don't (and may never) have.

Compatibilism recognises that the underlying behaviour of the smallest components of the system we call a brain may well be completely deterministic, and at the same time recognises that this information is as valueless in understanding the will, as expressed by that brain, as a knowledge of the Standard Model of particle physics is, in working out how to knapp a flint axe.

Why you felt that quoting Carroll's position as a compatabilist was in some way support for your incompatibilist stance is another mystery.

 

[DBT]

Are you are saying that an emergent property, a thought for instance, may function independently of the brain that is generating thought?

Yes. But also, no. A thought is a characteristic of a collection of neurons; It requires the neurons in order to exist, but no given individual neuron is thinking.

Brains think; Neurons do not.

That thought has autonomy, and somehow is able to think for itself?

No, the brain is able to think for itself. The thought is a consequence of brain activity. But it's not a part of the brain.

That's not an analogy.

Sure it is; It illustrates your error.

Here's a (perhaps better) analogy:

If you have a chamber divided into two parts, one containing air, and the other a vacuum, and you then open a valve between the two parts, air will rush into the vacuum until the pressure in the two parts is equal.

This is due to the second law of thermodynamics, which says that a system in a low entropy state will move towards a higher entropy state.

The initial state of the chamber is a lower entropy state than the final state of the chamber.

Which air molecule(s), or other component(s) of the chamber had low entropy at the beginning of our experiment?

The answer is that the question is meaningless. Entropy is not a characteristic of any given part of the setup; It is only a characteristic of the system as a whole.

A given Nitrogen or Oxygen molecule doesn't change in any way during this experiment, it just bounces around in accordance with the simple laws of motion, conservation of momentum, conservation of energy, etc. It doesn't have entropy*; The idea of the entropy of a given molecule in the system, as an objective characteristic, is meaningless.

Entropy is only a thing for large aggregates of molecules all doing their own thing. The aggregate has entropy; The parts do not.








* Yeah, I know, that's an oversimplification. Use helium instead of air, if that helps. Or spherical, perfectly elastic and frictionless horses. Your local quantum mechanic should be able to order them from his parts catalogue.

My error? I didn't say that a neuron can think or feel, or that thoughts, generated by a neural network/ brain have autonomy or free will, whatever that's supposed to be, Libertarian, compatibalist. Compatibilists simply define free will as acting without being forced, coerced or unduly influenced, which doesn't make sense in relation to determinism.

 

[DBT]

It takes more than one neuron to experience pain. It requires a network of neurons, a brain, to generate the experience of pain or thought, a decision or an action in response to an external event, an injury, disease in organs, damage to limbs, nerves, etc.

Exactly. Thank you.

Pain is an emergent property. It's not a property of any part of the system, and cannot be understood by studying the behaviour of each part separately. Same with thought. It may be deterministic, but it isn't determined by the components of the system, but rather by the system as a whole. That's your compatibilism, right there.

Compatibilists believe the world to be deterministic, which means that everything that happens is determined by antecedents, including emergent behaviours. Where if the brain generates a thought or an action, it is not arbitrary or freely willed, but shaped and formed according to the conditions that brought it into being.

 

[bilby]

It takes more than one neuron to experience pain. It requires a network of neurons, a brain, to generate the experience of pain or thought, a decision or an action in response to an external event, an injury, disease in organs, damage to limbs, nerves, etc.

Exactly. Thank you.

Pain is an emergent property. It's not a property of any part of the system, and cannot be understood by studying the behaviour of each part separately. Same with thought. It may be deterministic, but it isn't determined by the components of the system, but rather by the system as a whole. That's your compatibilism, right there.

Compatibilists believe the world to be deterministic, which means that everything that happens is determined by antecedents, including emergent behaviours.

Yes.

Where if the brain generates a thought or an action, it is not arbitrary or both freely willed, but and shaped and formed according to the conditions that brought it into being.

FTFY. These are not mutually exclusive options. They are compatible. The clue is in the name.

 

[DBT]

It takes more than one neuron to experience pain. It requires a network of neurons, a brain, to generate the experience of pain or thought, a decision or an action in response to an external event, an injury, disease in organs, damage to limbs, nerves, etc.

Exactly. Thank you.

Pain is an emergent property. It's not a property of any part of the system, and cannot be understood by studying the behaviour of each part separately. Same with thought. It may be deterministic, but it isn't determined by the components of the system, but rather by the system as a whole. That's your compatibilism, right there.

Compatibilists believe the world to be deterministic, which means that everything that happens is determined by antecedents, including emergent behaviours.

Yes.

Where if the brain generates a thought or an action, it is not arbitrary or both freely willed, but and shaped and formed according to the conditions that brought it into being.

FTFY. These are not mutually exclusive options. They are compatible. The clue is in the name.

Names and labels are not enough. An explanation has to account for the nature of the mechanisms and means of thought and action, where acting without being externally forced, coerced or unduly influenced does not account for the nature of underlying process that shapes, forms generates the response determistically, without choice, as defined by compatibilists.

 

[bilby]

Names and labels are not enough.

I no longer care. We can agree to disagree; Or we can pointlessly re-hash one of the many many such futile threads on the subject that have occurred here in the past.

I choose not to participate further in the latter.

To quote the OP:

I don’t particularly wish to revive the long-running free will/determinism debates staged here, unless there are new participants (a defender of libertarianism would be welcome) or old participants who have a fresh angle to offer.

 

[DBT]

Names and labels are not enough.

I no longer care. We can agree to disagree; Or we can pointlessly re-hash one of the many many such futile threads on the subject that have occurred here in the past.

I stopped caring long ago. Even though I know I shouldn't, and it is futile, from time to time I may feel to urge to respond.

Why does it keep coming up? The hope of something new? A new angle? A special insight.

I choose not to participate further in the latter.

If determinism is true, you have reached your threshold in tolerance and your decision (not choice) was inevitable.

To quote the OP:

I don’t particularly wish to revive the long-running free will/determinism debates staged here, unless there are new participants (a defender of libertarianism would be welcome) or old participants who have a fresh angle to offer.

I don't think there are any fresh angles. All out of fresh angles.

It's been done to death.

But, who knows, maybe someone will come in and astonish us all.

 

[Elixir]

You’re free to consider your freedom to believe in free will, to be deterministic. But if you choose to believe in determinism, that’s your choice and it’s all on you.

 

[DBT]

You’re free to consider your freedom to believe in free will, to be deterministic. But if you choose to believe in determinism, that’s your choice and it’s all on you.

Compatibilists do believe in determinism.

 

[Jarhyn]

You’re free to consider your freedom to believe in free will, to be deterministic. But if you choose to believe in determinism, that’s your choice and it’s all on you.

Compatibilists do believe in determinism.

So, something that took far too long for me to learn how to express properly, if even now I can, is that responsibility isn't zero sum.

If physics means the universe is in constant conjugation, why wouldn't that imply that each conjugation is responsible in turn for the next?

I could propose some radical method of creating the universe last Thursday, by stopping time, making a copy in a separate instance of Spinoza's God or whatever, that starts Last Thursday, without having processed Last Wednesday there.

Anyway, in this conception, there are clearly two different paths to getting there, one involving last Wednesday and one involving last Wednesday and some crazy bullshit involving a god and simulation theory.

Both are equally valid paths to the same result. Technically, it could happen entirely randomly by accident by a *suitably* infinite cardinality of randomly configured Spinozan Gods, some kinda Boltzmann-brain probability event!

Are you less responsible in one because a god made one and not the other? The calculation is still at some locust *of you*, by you.

You act the way you do even if the universe just precipitated with you as you due to completely indeterministic reasons, or even if you didn't.

If "someone killed someone last Wednesday", does it matter whether the psychopath who did didn't actually kill anyone here, even if he's exactly the same as the person who did over there?

More, it matters in the simulator to the sims because the simulation psychopath is still simulation psychopathic and still wants to simulation-kill their fellow sims, and those sims don't want that to happen.

I certainly wouldn't be inviting that simulator psychopath to my garden party either way!

Anyway, the point of using Last Thursday is because it's been shown or argued well to be an entirely worthless question. The answer should be known: it wouldn't make a difference in any sense at all.

Therefore it can't make a difference in terms of responsibility.

 

[DBT]

You’re free to consider your freedom to believe in free will, to be deterministic. But if you choose to believe in determinism, that’s your choice and it’s all on you.

Compatibilists do believe in determinism.

So, something that took far too long for me to learn how to express properly, if even now I can, is that responsibility isn't zero sum.

If physics means the universe is in constant conjugation, why wouldn't that imply that each conjugation is responsible in turn for the next?

I could propose some radical method of creating the universe last Thursday, by stopping time, making a copy in a separate instance of Spinoza's God or whatever, that starts Last Thursday, without having processed Last Wednesday there.

Anyway, in this conception, there are clearly two different paths to getting there, one involving last Wednesday and one involving last Wednesday and some crazy bullshit involving a god and simulation theory.

Both are equally valid paths to the same result. Technically, it could happen entirely randomly by accident by a *suitably* infinite cardinality of randomly configured Spinozan Gods, some kinda Boltzmann-brain probability event!

Are you less responsible in one because a god made one and not the other? The calculation is still at some locust *of you*, by you.

You act the way you do even if the universe just precipitated with you as you due to completely indeterministic reasons, or even if you didn't.

If "someone killed someone last Wednesday", does it matter whether the psychopath who did didn't actually kill anyone here, even if he's exactly the same as the person who did over there?

More, it matters in the simulator to the sims because the simulation psychopath is still simulation psychopathic and still wants to simulation-kill their fellow sims, and those sims don't want that to happen.

I certainly wouldn't be inviting that simulator psychopath to my garden party either way!

Anyway, the point of using Last Thursday is because it's been shown or argued well to be an entirely worthless question. The answer should be known: it wouldn't make a difference in any sense at all.

Therefore it can't make a difference in terms of responsibility.

Compatibilists are determinists, they believe in constant conjunction, that past conditions/ events determine current events, which in turn determines future events. Which of course does not permit alternate actions, and in turn eliminates choice, where decisions are set by antecedents in each and every instance of decision making.

 

[pood]

Determinism doesn’t eliminate choices, it generates options, and brains are able to choose among those options. A rock cannot choose what to do after being pushed down a hill. Humans can try to break or avoid or ease the fall, and will. The hard determinists owes an explanation of the difference between rocks and animals. Granted some of our survival behaviors are instinctual and reflexive, but others are clearly a matter of planning, thinking and choosing. And, as one of the referenced articles indicates, the hard determinist owes an explanation of how future human behavior was encoded at the Big Bang, or the Last Scattering Surface, as the article would have it. I asked this a number of times and never received a satisfactory explanation as to how, for example, the jazz improv composer did not create his piece — rather, it was created by Hard Determinism. This is the hard determinist Jerry Coyne’s stance, who also calls humans “meat robots.” This view of hard determinism seems quasi-theological to me, and also a category error itself — determinism is a description of how things broadly go at the classical scale, and never a prescription.

If any other members would care to go down this rabbit hole, feel free.

 

[Elixir]

“I could propose some radical method of creating the universe last Thursday, by stopping time, making a copy in a separate instance of Spinoza's God or whatever, that starts Last Thursday, without having processed Last Wednesday there.”

It is no trivial thing to make an identical copy. One tiny electron of deviation and the butterfly effect will gitcha. God obviously meant for copies to improve over time on average, so that they might evolve into things that are more amusing to God.