Quantum Mechanics and Determinism?

[Tournesol]

All facts of physics are deduced form facts of mathematics. There is no
way of bypassing the maths to get at reality-in-the-raw.

 

[moving finger]

All facts of physics are deduced form facts of mathematics. There is no way of bypassing the maths to get at reality-in-the-raw.

Your analysis seems back to front. Physical facts are not "deduced from" mathematics, they are "described by" mathematics. Mathematics is a language, not a source of physical facts. To suggest that physical facts are "deduced from" mathematics is rather like suggesting that historical facts are "deduced from" the English language.

To describe any "fact of physics" we need to use a language for that description. It just so happens that the language of mathematics is well suited to the decription of 3rd person perspectives on the physical world. What you call a fact of physics is thus simply a mathematical description of the world from that perspective.

But when it comes to 1st person perspectives on conscious perception, the language of mathematics does not work. For me, my experience of seeing the colour red is a fact of physics (just as much as the fact that apples fall to the Earth is a fact of physics), but my conscious perception is not describable using mathematics. It's a 1st person fact, inaccessible to 3rd person investigation.

Best Regards

 

[selfAdjoint]

but my conscious perception is not describable using mathematics. It's a 1st person fact, inaccessible to 3rd person investigation.

What, Never?

Suppose somebody came up with an algorithm that reliably generated predictions of your first-person experiences as perceived by you? This might req

 

[moving finger]

What, Never?

Suppose somebody came up with an algorithm that reliably generated predictions of your first-person experiences as perceived by you? This might req

Several problems prevent this.

To predict some X using mathematics requires that the X be somehow objectively quantified or parameterised. My experience of the colour red is not something that can be objectively quantified or parameterised in terms of anything else.

What perspective is the prediction to be made from? It is impossible to accurately predict "my conscious experience of the colour red" assuming the perspective of someone else, because "my conscious experience of the colour red" includes me as part of that experience (ie its not a 3rd person perspective experience, its a 1st person subjective experience). The only way to predict my experience of the colour red is therefore to include me as part of the prediction - in which case we are not into prediction any more, we are into full-scale modelling, or perfect replication of the experiencing agent. Of course it is possible to replicate the experiencing agent, and if this is what you mean by algorithmic prediction then of course this is possible - but it's no longer a mathematical model or description, it's a carbon copy. But even a carbon copy would not perfectly replicate my conscious experience, because that carbon copy occupies a different position in spacetime to the position that I occupy (hence a different perspective on the world), and from the moment of creation its conscious experience and mine would begin to diverge.

Best Regards

 

[selfAdjoint]

Soorry, I couldn't finish my last post.

You are presumably the authority on what you experience. Now I believe that experience in anyone case is governed by only a finite number of parameters. After all, your brain is finite. You can't detect these parameters or see how they combine because of the "Metzinger horizon", but suppose there was a mechanism that you could hook up to that would detect them and generate some particular "red" in your consciousness, using some algorithm derived from its analysis of your natural workings. You could tune it yourself and see how it compared with your natural perception. Wouldn't that satisfy you? Or do you say this is fundamentally impossible?

 

[Tournesol]

Your analysis seems back to front. Physical facts are not "deduced from" mathematics, they are "described by" mathematics.

It's called the theory-ladenness of observation.

Mathematics is a language, not a source of physical facts. To suggest that physical facts are "deduced from" mathematics is rather like suggesting that historical facts are "deduced from" the English language.

Physical facts are derived from the mathematical
descriptions used in thories which have been tested
aposteriori. They are not deduced apriori.

To describe any "fact of physics" we need to use a language for that description. It just so happens that the language of mathematics is well suited to the decription of 3rd person perspectives on the physical world. What you call a fact of physics is thus simply a mathematical description of the world from that perspective.

It remains the case that there is no justifcation for the claim
that particles have real but unobserved (simultaneous) momenta and positions.
They cannot be obseved, and they are not in the formalism.

But when it comes to 1st person perspectives on conscious perception, the language of mathematics does not work. For me, my experience of seeing the colour red is a fact of physics (just as much as the fact that apples fall to the Earth is a fact of physics), but my conscious perception is not describable using mathematics. It's a 1st person fact, inaccessible to 3rd person investigation.

Why not, if it is a fact of physics ?

 

[Tournesol]

To predict some X using mathematics requires that the X be somehow objectively quantified or parameterised. My experience of the colour red is not something that can be objectively quantified or parameterised in terms of anything else.

Why not? Nothing has intrinsically unique properties under physicalism,
just complex combinations of a few basic properties like mass and
charge.

What perspective is the prediction to be made from? It is impossible to accurately predict "my conscious experience of the colour red" assuming the perspective of someone else, because "my conscious experience of the colour red" includes me as part of that experience (ie its not a 3rd person perspective experience, its a 1st person subjective experience).

Physicalistically speaking "you" are entirely describable form a 2rd person
PoV, given sufficient resources, and so is any (literal) perspective you might
have.

The only way to predict my experience of the colour red is therefore to include me as part of the prediction - in which case we are not into prediction any more, we are into full-scale modelling, or perfect replication of the experiencing agent.

Which is possible in principle.

If physicalism is true.

Of course it is possible to replicate the experiencing agent, and if this is what you mean by algorithmic prediction then of course this is possible - but it's no longer a mathematical model or description, it's a carbon copy. But even a carbon copy would not perfectly replicate my conscious experience, because that carbon copy occupies a different position in spacetime to the position that I occupy (hence a different perspective on the world), and from the moment of creation its conscious experience and mine would begin to diverge.

In ways which are predictable, in principle, if physicalism is true.

 

[moving finger]

Soorry, I couldn't finish my last post.

You are presumably the authority on what you experience. Now I believe that experience in anyone case is governed by only a finite number of parameters. After all, your brain is finite. You can't detect these parameters or see how they combine because of the "Metzinger horizon", but suppose there was a mechanism that you could hook up to that would detect them and generate some particular "red" in your consciousness, using some algorithm derived from its analysis of your natural workings. You could tune it yourself and see how it compared with your natural perception. Wouldn't that satisfy you? Or do you say this is fundamentally impossible?

This is possible - but it's only part of the equation.

My conscious experience of the colour red is a combination of the sensory input plus my consciousness. By "generating some particular red in my consciousness" you are not using an algorithm that "generates my conscious experience of red ex nihilo", you are using an algorithm that "generates an experience of red within my pre-existing consciousness" (which is quite a different thing).

You can easily generate an experience of red within my pre-existing consciousness - just put a red ball in my field of view. But you cannot generate my conscious experience of red ex nihilo, except by re-creating my conscious self ex-nihilo.

Best Regards

 

[selfAdjoint]

You can easily generate an experience of red within my pre-existing consciousness - just put a red ball in my field of view. But you cannot generate my conscious experience of red ex nihilo, except by re-creating my conscious self ex-nihilo.

You seem to be saying here that modular brain functionality has nothing to do with consciousness, that consciousness is some kind of monad where the entire thing has to couple to the function and no analysis is possible.

Do you believe this or am I misinterpreting you?

 

[moving finger]

You seem to be saying here that modular brain functionality has nothing to do with consciousness, that consciousness is some kind of monad where the entire thing has to couple to the function and no analysis is possible.

Do you believe this or am I misinterpreting you?

I have no idea how you arrive at this conclusion from my posts. Could you show your line of reasoning?

I believe consciousness is a unitary process which is an emergent property of certain physical systems.

If by "monad" you mean an indivisible, impenetrable unit of substance viewed as the basic constituent element of physical reality (as in the metaphysics of Leibnitz, in which case a monad is fundamental as opposed to being emergent) then how do you get from "I believe consciousness is a unitary process which is an emergent property of certain physical systems" to "consciousness is some kind of monad"?

Here is an anlaogy : Think of a unitary state, which is a state or country that is governed constitutionally as one single unit, with one constitutionally created legislature. Change the constitution or the legislature, and you still have a unitary state but it is now functioning as a slightly different unitary state. But none of this implies that there is a "monad" or indivisible basic constituent of statehood. None of the constituent parts of the unitary state contain anything we could describe as "a monad of statehood" within them. The state emerges as a consequence of the way the constituent parts are put together and work together. Consciousness emerges in an analogous way.

The entire conscious experience is indeed coupled with the experiencer, subject and object are inextricably bound up together (object here in the sense of the consciously perceived phenomena, subject in the sense of the created self within the process of consciousness which is supposed to be perceiving these phenomena), all perfectly consistent with the explanatory model proposed by Metzinger. This phenomenon of consciousness can be described and analysed "from the outside " (studies of behaviour and of the neural correlates of consciousness), but we have no language (mathematical or otherwise) with which to describe or analyse it "from the inside". Why do we have no language? Because a conscious experience is an "internal 1st person view" of a unitary process and it cannot by definition be broken down into constituent parts of subject and object, and thus by definition is not amenable to such analysis. Unitary process - not monad.

You know what your conscious experience of "seeing red" is like for you, but can you describe this conscious experience to someone else?

Best Regards

 

[moving finger]

It's called the theory-ladenness of observation.

Now there is a clue as to why 1st person facts cannot be described from a 3rd person perspective - think about it.

Physical facts are derived from the mathematical descriptions used in thories which have been tested aposteriori. They are not deduced apriori.

Mathematical descriptions may be derived, but physical facts are not derived, they are observed and described. The so-called human-derived description of the “law of gravity” (described by Newton’s or Einstein’s equations) is not a prescriptive law which tells the universe how it must behave; the equations simply attempt to describe how the universe does seem to behave. Whether Newton’s or Einstein’s equations are indeed accurate descriptions of how the universe behaves is then tested by experiment.

It remains the case that there is no justifcation for the claim that particles have real but unobserved (simultaneous) momenta and positions. They cannot be obseved, and they are not in the formalism.

Both the hypothesis "quantum objects have real but unobservable (simultaneous) momenta and positions" AND its negation is one that cannot be tested, therefore is an unscientific hypothesis. From a scientific point of view, the question is meaningless. It follows that the question "what is the precise momentum of this quantum object given its precise position?" is also meaningless.

Why not, if it is a fact of physics ?

We have been round this loop several times. Where is the law which says all facts of physics must be accessible to 3rd person investigation?

Why not? Nothing has intrinsically unique properties under physicalism, just complex combinations of a few basic properties like mass and charge.

Every physical object has properties which emerge from the detailed configuration of component parts. The height of a chair is a property of that chair, but it is not simply related to the mass and charge of it’s constituent molecules – it depends critically on how those constituents are put together. Consciousness is such an emergent property, but unlike the height of a chair, each consciousness is unique because each consciousness emerges from the detailed internal configuration of the brain.

Physicalistically speaking "you" are entirely describable form a 2rd person PoV, given sufficient resources, and so is any (literal) perspective you might have.

Physicalism does not entail that everything is describable from the 3rd person perspective.

perfect replication of the experiencing agent.

Which is possible in principle.

I am not sure that perfect replication of an entity is possible even in principle - it seems to me that you would run up against the HUP (you could not be certain that you had perfectly replicated all quantum states, because it is impossible in principle to know simultaneously the complementary properties of those quantum states).

But even if possible (which from the above looks unlikely), perfect replication does not entail predicting my experience of the colour red from a 3rd person perspective.

In ways which are predictable, in principle, if physicalism is true.

I assume this is a mistake. Are you suggesting that physicalism entails predictability? In which case (according to you) in an indeterminable (let alone an indeterministic) world physicalism is most definitely not true?

Physicalism does not entail that everything is either describable or predictable from the 3rd person perspective.

Best Regards

 

[selfAdjoint]

I have no idea how you arrive at this conclusion from my posts. Could you show your line of reasoning?

I believe consciousness is a unitary process which is an emergent property of certain physical systems

If by "monad" you mean an indivisible, impenetrable unit of substance viewed as the basic constituent element of physical reality (as in the metaphysics of Leibnitz, in which case a monad is fundamental as opposed to being emergent) then how do you get from "I believe consciousness is a unitary process which is an emergent property of certain physical systems" to "consciousness is some kind of monad"?.

I was afraid that my use of the phrase "some kind of monad" would strart a false trail in the direction of Leibnitz; no I didn't mean that. I was trying to express the idea you here call unitary, without using the word, which has a completely diffrent meaning in physics.

Here is an anlaogy : Think of a unitary state, which is a state or country that is governed constitutionally as one single unit, with one constitutionally created legislature. Change the constitution or the legislature, and you still have a unitary state but it is now functioning as a slightly different unitary state. But none of this implies that there is a "monad" or indivisible basic constituent of statehood. None of the constituent parts of the unitary state contain anything we could describe as "a monad of statehood" within them. The state emerges as a consequence of the way the constituent parts are put together and work together. Consciousness emerges in an analogous way.

That still means that consciousness is 'emergent" at all times (dynamically) from the whole brain (and probably the whole body too). I just can't go along with that personally. It seems to me that your country could change in one feature and not in another, and anything that remained unchanged through all such processes could hardly be anything more than a name. I am a strongly believing US patriot, but I don't thing "The United States of America" is a real thing apart from the COnstitution, the laws, the people, the history, and so on and so on.

The entire conscious experience is indeed coupled with the experiencer, subject and object are inextricably bound up together (object here in the sense of the consciously perceived phenomena, subject in the sense of the created self within the process of consciousness which is supposed to be perceiving these phenomena), all perfectly consistent with the explanatory model proposed by Metzinger. This phenomenon of consciousness can be described and analysed "from the outside " (studies of behaviour and of the neural correlates of consciousness), but we have no language (mathematical or otherwise) with which to describe or analyse it "from the inside". Why do we have no language? Because a conscious experience is an "internal 1st person view" of a unitary process and it cannot by definition be broken down into constituent parts of subject and object, and thus by definition is not amenable to such analysis. Unitary process - not monad.

You know what your conscious experience of "seeing red" is like for you, but can you describe this conscious experience to someone else?

Best Regards

That is why I began my post by saying you were the authority on your experiences and tried to come up with a thought experiment adapted to that. In any case, inability to explain qualia doesn't come from some special status of consciousness, it obviously comes from a deep limitation on language. I can well believe Penrose's claim that minds transcend digital computers (language "deep structure" is essentially a digital algorithm), but that doesn't mean all rational systems are mute: there is always analog! Tarski vs Goedel.

 

[moving finger]

That still means that consciousness is 'emergent" at all times (dynamically) from the whole brain (and probably the whole body too). I just can't go along with that personally.

OK, understood, but I can. And I think that's what Metzinger's ideas boil down to also (ie that consciousness is a continuously emergent dynamic process). It also seems (to me) to be the view of the majority of research neuroscientists (see the work of Antonio Damasio). In Damasio's own words - "you are the music, while the music lasts" (in his excellent book The Feeling of What Happens)

It seems to me that your country could change in one feature and not in another, and anything that remained unchanged through all such processes could hardly be anything more than a name. I am a strongly believing US patriot, but I don't thing "The United States of America" is a real thing apart from the COnstitution, the laws, the people, the history, and so on and so on.

The "United States of America" is a name that we give to the property of a particular phenomenon which emerges from a complex entity comprising the combination of country, people, constitution, laws, history etc.

In the same way, if we ask "what is the University of Oxford?" we are quite right in describing it as an academic institution located in Oxford, England, which is also the oldest university in the English-speaking world. But if we were to try to locate this University in space, we would find that there is no single physical building, or document, or person, or group of people, that we could point to and say "there, THAT is the University of Oxford". Rather, the University is an emergent property which has an identity that is characterised by a particular collection of buildings, staff, students, traditions, libraries, documents, ideas, statutes, etc etc, each of which is changeable and fluid (and each in its own way contributing to the overall properties of the University), but the component parts are changeable and fluid in such a way that the overall identity which is characterised as "the University of Oxford" continues to exist even though the component parts may change substantially. Does this mean the University of Oxford is (in your opinion) not "real"?

Need I point out how one can draw some very close analogies between this description of the identity of the University of Oxford and the emergence of a conscious identity? (and no, I am NOT suggesting the University of Oxford is a conscious entity!)

Whether you call such an emergent property "real" or not seems to me to be a question of semantics (ie it depends how you define real). How are we to differentiate between "real properties" and "unreal properties"?

inability to explain qualia doesn't come from some special status of consciousness, it obviously comes from a deep limitation on language

You are partly right. The inability indeed does come from a deep limitation on language - which is the in principle impossibility of describing the 1st person perspective on/in the states of phenomenal consciousness using any kind of language - which in turn is a consequence of the "special status" of phenomenal consciousness (the fact that it is a 1st person perspective).

I think Tournesol may have (perhaps unintentionally) hit the nail on the head with his earlier reference to the theory-ladenness of observation. Quine argues that everything one observes is interpreted through a prior understanding of other theories and concepts. Whenever we describe observations (whether we are using the English language, or mathematics), we are constantly utilizing terms and measurements that our society has adopted. Therefore, it would be impossible for someone else to understand these observations if they are unfamiliar with, or disagree with, the theories that these terms come from.

Now extend this to the attempted description or interpretation of a 1st person perspective on phenomenal consciousness. There is nowhere to start, because by definition a 1st person perspective on phenomenal consciousness does not share any terms that we might use in such a description with anyone else. In short, there exists (in principle) no common language with which we can describe or interpret phenomenal consciousness.

Here is a useful metaphor that may help to visualise the idea I am trying to get across : Each conscious agent exists on an island of 1st person perspective subjectivity, each of these islands isolated from the other islands of conscious awareness in terms of direct communication, but at the same time linked to these other islands via the intervening sea of 3rd person perspective. The only language of communication between these islands is the common language of the 3rd person perspective "sea" that lies between them; the conscious agents cannot communicate with each other directly at the 1st person perspective level because there is no common language at that level.

Best Regards

 

[Tournesol]

I don't see the point in defining something
in such a ways as to make it impossible. We don't define knowledge as omniscience.
the point is that we could define knowledge as omniscience, in which case it would be (naturalistically) impossible.

In the same way, we could define free will as the kind that requires ultimate responsibility (UR) for actions (the kind of free will that libertarians would like us to have), in which case this makes free will (naturalistically) impossible.

If there is no ultimate responsibiity (as defined by Kane and myself), then it makes no sense to punish the shooter and not the gun -- they are both causally repsonsible.
Is that the conclusion you wish to draw ?

Thing's don't become possible just because you believe in them.
Agreed! This is certainly true in the case of UR!

How fortunate that I have written an elaborate defence of UR, isntead of just
saying that I believe in it.

But you can define words realistically.

And the "realistic" definition of free will is either the compatibilist or the free will skeptic definition (which latter incidentally is effectively the same as your definition), which does not entail UR.

Compatiblists think people are responsible for their actions. You, apparently, don't. Unless you mean
something different from Kane and myself by "UR"

MovingFinger's "infinite regress" argument is an exampe of what Daniel Dennett calls the "Prime Mammal" fallacy

I suggest this is a false analogy, based on a category error. Whereas UR is supervenient on UR

Huh ? Did you mean to write that ?

(UR cannot be created naturalistically within a system where there is no UR already present),

Why not ?

There is the responsibility we attribute to agents, and there is whatever mechanism objectively
underpins it, if anything does. Which are you talking about ?

People can't have responsibility
attributed to them unless they already have had responsibility attributed to them ? That barely
makes sense.

People can't have an mechanism for UR unless the parts of the mechanism have UR themselves?

That is quite arbitrary and unprecedented. None of my neurons can remember the capital of Norway,
but *I* can. There are such things as high-level features.

(and let's not forget that where there is no incompatibilist
reponsibility, thre is still compatibilist responsibility,
and where there is no compatibilist reponsibility,
there is still causal reponsibility)

In other words, could you show how UR is created within an agent?

Minimally, an agent has UR if there are objective grounds for subjecting that agent to praise and blame in order to modify their behaviour.

Sorry, Tournesol, but this does not show “how UR is created within an agent” –

UR isn't a thing that is created like bile in the liver. We hold agents repsonsible, and
may or may not propose mechanism that justiy that nonarbitrarily.

it simply describes how we arbitrarily

It may be arbirtrary for determinsits, but it is not for us libertarians
as a I clearly state:

"The point about Origination is that we hold some entities repsonsible and not others. For compatiblists, that is a mere convention, for libertarians it must have an objective basis."

assign responsibility simpliciter to agents, and how (some of us) assume that this responsibility is also somehow “ultimate responsibility”.

It is only UR if it is something more that causal responsibility.

You have not shown how (ie in what way) UR is created,

The objective mechanism for UR is of course the RIG/SIS mechanism.

or how (ie in what way) we can detect such UR (as opposed to simply assuming that it exists).

Presumable meaning how we can detect an objective basis for UR.

Discussed here: http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_darwin.html#pseudo

the theory of the evolution of species does not posit that “every mammal is descended from a mammal”,

It posits soemthing close to that. It certainly doesn't posit that reptiles can give
brith to mammals.

or that “every human has human parents”. Speciation boundaries are often, in the limit, the result of arbitrary human judgements. If one was to follow my own ancestry back through the generations until one came to the primate ancestors of homo-sapiens, at what point (in which generation) would we say “aha, this generation is no longer homo-sapiens, it is something else”. The point in the family tree at which we say “this generation is homo-sapiens, but the immediately prior generation is not” is in effect an arbitrary judgement-call.

That is the point! There is no well-defined point where responsibility kicks in. But that doesn't
mean it it goes back forever ("the parents of a mammal must be 100% mammalian"), and that doesn't mean
it doesn't exist at all. The parents of a mammal must be more-or-less mammalian,
and to be a responsible agent, you must be able to more-or-less exert control over your future
state of mind.

In real evolutionary theory , mammalhood simply tapers off or fades away -- it neither regresses infinitely nor stops dead at a Prime Mammal. That is the approach I adopt about rational self-control.

With respect, you are deluding yourself if you think the emergence of species is in any way analagous to the “emergence” of UR. You have not established that your model possesses UR, you simply assume it does.

You are evading the point. I have shown how my theory does not incur infinite regresses.

I have also described a mechansim that does justify the non-arbitrary ascription of
responsibility to agents.

http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_darwin.html#semicompatiblism

MF thinks a regress must be entailed because he thinks that an action is only free if it is entirely devoid of outside influnce, with the corollary that you are only responsible for your future state at all if you are 100% responsible for it.

Sorry, but this is not an accurate summary of my reason for postulating infinite regress. A regress is entailed because to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you must also be ultimately responsible for the way you are (because the way you are, in absence of mere caprice, determines what you do).

which is a regress...but not an infinite one. Only infintie regresses are problemantic.

But to be ultimately responsible for the way you are, you would have to have intentionally brought it about that you are the way you are.

More or less.

Intentionality is a fundamental aspect of UR (if what we do is not what we intend to do, how can we be held ultimately responsible for what we do?). But to intentionally bring about a certain state N, you must have had a prior state N-1 which led

More or less.

to the intentional development of your state N (if N is an arbitrary state in the sense that you had no state prior to N which intentionally brought about state N, then you can hardly be responsible for state N, can you?). But this also means that state N-1 must have been brought about

More or less.

intentionally in a similar fashion, which means there must have been some prior intentional state N-2…… and so on ad infinitum.

No, not ad infinitum. Not if you take the more-or-lesses into
account. Suppose my state at time N is 90% intentionally brought about by my state
at time N-1, and my state at time N-1 is 90% intentionally brought about by my state
at time N-2, and so on.

So, projecting backwards:-
N is 90% intentionally brought about by N-1
N is 81% intentionally brought about by N-2
N is 73% intentionally brought about by N-3
N is 59% intentionally brought about by N-4
N is 47% intentionally brought about by N-5
N is 43% intentionally brought about by N-6
N is 33% intentionally brought about by N-7
N is 31% intentionally brought about by N-8
N is 28% intentionally brought about by N-9
N is 25% intentionally brought about by N-10
N is 23% intentionally brought about by N-11
N is 20% intentionally brought about by N-12
N is 18% intentionally brought about by N-13
N is 17% intentionally brought about by N-14
N is 14% intentionally brought about by N-15
N is 12% intentionally brought about by N-16
N is 10% intentionally brought about by N-17

etc etc.

It tapers off, just like mammalhood.

UR thus entails an infinite regress of intentional states. The only escape from such regress is to postulate either some arbitrary intentional starting state, or that the self is somehow magically and mystically able to pull itself up by its own bootstraps, the original causa sui (cause of itself).
I am open to any explanation or suggestion as to how this infinite regress can be avoided.

The same way Prime Mammals are, as I have pointed out several times.

 

[Tournesol]

An agent is responsible if the have control over their actions. They don't have to have contol over their control (ad infinitum).

If we wish to claim that the agent has ultimate control over its actions, then yes they do have to have control over their control. (If someone else is in "control of my control", then in an ultimate sense I am not in fact in control of my actions therefore cannot claim to be in ultimate control)

Non-sequitur. The fact that you are not in control-of-your-control does not mean
that someone else is. It just means the process of control is a "at a least partial" "more or less"
thing. Like mammalhood.

Taking your claim literally, then a simple thermostat is responsible by virtue of the fact that it controls the temperature of a room.

I said the regressive control-of-control isn't necessary for UR. I didn't say that non-regressive
control simpliciteris sufficient.

What I said was:-

UR has two main components. (1) a Casual Originative Power, the ability to do something that is not the inevitable outcome of external influences, and (2) Rational Self-Control.

In the “responsible simpliciter” sense this is of course quite correct, a thermostat is indeed responsible for controlling the temperature of a room. But it does not possesses ultimate responsibility, precisely because it does not have “control over its control” (ad infinitum).

It does not possesses UR because it has [n]neither[/b] Causal Originative Power [nb] nor [/b] Rational Self Control.

Your argument makes the same mistake as the confusion between “responsibility simpliciter” and “ultimate responsibility”. An inanimate machine can be responsible for an action, but that does not mean it possesses ultimate responsibility. A thermostat controls the temperature of a room, but that does not mean that it is in ultimate control (because the control it exerts is determined by a pre-existing design and programme which are not under the thermostat's control).

I have stated criteria for UR which are more than any theormostat
posses, whilst at the same time not involving an endless regress of
control-of-control.

To look at it another way, if no-one has UR, then no-one is morally responsible. Is that something you really believe ?

First define moral responsibility. If you mean “ultimate moral responsibility” then the concept is incoherent (hence no-one possesses ultimate moral responsibility – and yes, I do believe this). But moral responsibility without the “ultimate” qualification, like responsibility simpliciter, is quite coherent and does exist.

I have of course, already answered this question:

"The point about Origination is that we hold some entities repsonsible and not others. For compatiblists, that is a mere convention, for libertarians it must have an objective basis. The basis is the ability to intentionally originate actions. We do not blame the gun for the murder because guns do not spontaneously kill people. We praise the artist, not her brushes. The murderer does have the ability to intentionally originate actions."

Could you show how the infinite regress implicit in UR can be avoided?

What infinite regress ?
Read the paper that you pasted the link to in your last post :

http://www.morris.umn.edu/academic/p...allthesis.html

This paper clearly explains the nature of the infinite regress.

..in Kane's theory. I am aware of the faults in Kane's theory , and I have formulated
my theory to avoid them."However, Kane’s own account of free action seems to imply that Johnny’s first SFA was caused by some indeterministic
something which Johnny could have no control over."

My theory differs from Kane's in that

1) the control kicks in *after* the "coin toss" (ie the SIS filters the output of the RIG)

3) There are no SFA's as unique, rare events. Rather, self-formation is an ongoing process.

If I am to be ultimately responsible for my state N, then it follows that I must also be ultimately responsible for my state N-1, the causally antecedent state to N. But then I must also be ultimately responsible for my state N-2, the causally antecedent state to N-1, and so on ad infinituum. To avoid this regress you need to explain how it can come about that I can be held ultimately responsible for my state N in the case where I am NOT ultimately responsible for the causally antecedent state N-1. Suggesting that state N is not fully causally determined and has some indeterministic component does not generate ultimate responsibility.

You can be somehwere between totally responsible and totally irresponsinle.

(and suggesting that I need only be "partially ultimately responsible" rather than fully responsible for an action, whatever partial responsibility might mean, makes no difference to the injfinite regress argument, as shown towards the end of this post - you cannot generate "partial UR" from "zero UR" any more easily than you can generate "full UR" from "zero UR")

So how do partial mammals come about ?

In any case, you never have zero repsonsibility, because you always have
semicompatiblist responsibility (Rational Self Control without Casual Originative Power).

The conscious rational state I am in today needs to be connected with the states i was in yesterday and tommorow, but it odens't need 100% connection. I don't need to have full conscious, rational control from the moment I was born. It can "fade in". As of course it does, developmentally.

How does it “fade in”? By what process can a system which is not ultimately responsible for its actions at one moment in time then become ultimately responsible at a later moment in time?

By what mechanism does an organism that was a bit less mammalian have progeny that are
a bit more mammalian ? To have UR for your actions you neeed your "at least partly" bring
them about, to be responsible for the state of mind that brings your actions
about, you need ot be "at least partly" reponsible for it. The "at least partly" can
build up in gradual degrees, like mammalhood.

How can it come about that I can be held ultimately responsible for my state N if I am NOT ultimately responsible for the causally antecedent state N-1?

It's not black-and-white.

I agree conscious responsibility simpliciter “fades in” as conscious control fades in – but again we must not confuse responsibility simpliciter with ultimate responsibility.

What IYO is the difference ?

To do this, you will need to (i) establish the necessary & sufficient conditions for UR, then (ii) show that the agent satisfies these conditions.

UR has two main components. (1) a Casual Originative Power, the ability to do something that is not the inevitable outcome of external influences, and (2) Rational Self-Control.

Are you suggesting that these conditions are necessary & sufficient (N&S) for UR?

YES, already!

In other words, any agent which meets these conditions therefore possesses UR? I could in principle build a fancy thermostat which possesses “rational self-control”, with an added internal random number generator implanted to ensure that at least some of the thermostat’s behaviour is not “the inevitable outcome of external influences”. Such a machine would meet your above N&S conditions - does it follow that it possesses UR?

Yes. But it would be a very fancy theromometer. AI researchers
have been chasing human-style rationallity for decades.

If we cannot show either (a) that UR exists within an agent, or (b) propose some credible hypothesis as to how UR might be created within an agent, then any belief in the existence of UR is an issue of faith, not of science or philosophy.

Originally Posted by Tournesol
"If".

As explained above, you have not shown that UR exists or is created within any agent (when I asked you to show how UR is created within an agent, you simply described an assumption).

Of course: I am arguing that naturalist libertarianism is theoretically possible. Possibilities
are hypotheses are assumptions. The question is whether they are internally consistent.

You are also using assumptions in your counterargument; for instance it is just
as much an assumption that fundametnal indetermimism is indetectable as it is that
it is detectable.

Your argument is based simply on an assumption that UR exists,

I am assuming people are responsible for their actions.

with inadequate coherent evidential justification or rational support. That’s why I call it an issue of faith. That’s why the “If” – because you have not shown that belief in the existence UR is anything more than faith.

I am arguing that naturalist libertarianism is theoretically possible. It isredudant
to keep pointing out to to me that my avowedly hypothetical argument is indeed hypothetical.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

On a separate but related point, could you explain how your definition of FW differs from the "free will skeptic" position?

Hopefully not at all.

The point is that the explanatory mechansim is novel, not the explanandum.

A free will skeptic (such as myself) would say that the fact that an agent can rationally choose and consciously perform certain actions (ie act deterministically), some of which are not necessarily brought about inevitably by external circumstances (ie some of them may have indeterministic causes), is completely compatible with a simple mixture of determinism and indeterminsim, can be easily modeled by a simple machine, but does not satisfy the necessary conditions for libertarian free will by virtue of the fact that it is silent on the issue of UR.

Says who?
Says me. Your definition of free will is :
"the power or ability to rationally choose and consciously perform actions, at least some of which are not brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances".

"not brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances"
means indeterminism; Indeterminism entails Causal Originative Power, which is one of the
two components of the mechanism for UR. The other is rationallity which is also given in the definition.

You seem to be defining UR in some way different from myself, Dennett, kane, etc.
Not at all. My argument works for UR as defined by Kane, as shown below.

"According to Kane, in order for us to be responsible for our actions, we must be at least partly responsible for the sufficient causes that move us to action."
(here we assume that in the above "responsible" means "ultimately responsible")

And what about the causes of those causes?
Adding the qualification “at least partly” doesn’t change the argument.

Yes it does, in the same way that "at least partly mammalian" does?

If I am not (at least partly) UR for the state N-1 which is the sufficient cause of state N, then how can I possibly be (at least partly) UR for state N? (Kane agrees that I cannot).

You are causally and semicompatiblistically responsible for N-1.

But if I am to be (at least partly) UR for the state N-1, then I must also in turn be (at least partly) UR for the sufficient causal state N-2… and so on.

To be repsonsible is not the same as being causally responsible.
You can bring about states responsibly so long as your SIS
is working correctly. The SIS will filter out any
excesively irresponsible suggestions of the RIG.

How do you avoid the infinite regress of (partial) UR? To do this, you will need to show how you can generate partial UR from a starting state of zero UR…….. can you? If you cannot show how it is done, your belief in UR is an article of faith and not of philosophy or science (which unfortunately then puts you in the supernaturalistic camp).

You always have semicompatilbist resposibility by virtue of having rationallity.
There is never a state of zero responsibility.

By the way, thank you very much for the link at http://www.morris.umn.edu/academic/p...allthesis.html

This paper clearly agrees that UR does indeed lead to infinite regress - perhaps you should read it yourself? This is one of the main conclusions of the paper :

Kane’s own theory of freedom does not seem to meet the UR condition. His notion of Self-Forming Actions seems to be inherently flawed. Kane tries to use SFAs to evade the problem of regression concerning the origins of our act. However, Kane’s theory does not overcome the regress problem. Kane’s theory does not give and adequate account of how agents can gain responsibility-grounding control.

Already answered. I avoid SFA's

I am simply claiming the same for your "theory".

But my theory isn't the same ans Kane's!

Incoherent means self-contradictory.

Not at all.

Incoherent means “it doesn’t hang together and make clear, rational sense”. Someone who is incoherent is someone who is unable to think or express their thoughts in a clear or orderly manner.

A self-contradictory statement might be called incoherent (but this is arguable), but incoherent statements are not necessarily self-contradictory.

Once you depart from self-contradiction as the criterion for incoherence,
you depart from what can be demonstrated in a clear and objective manner.

What is "hanging together" ? Who gets to decide what rationallity is ?

Is it coherent to quote a criticis of theory A as also being a criticism of theory B ?

Whether one believes the world is intrinsically deterministic or indeterministic is a matter of faith, not science.

Unless is is proveable. Which you don't know, one way or the other.
But I do know – it follows quite naturally from the HUP.

If the HUP is epistemic and non ontic. Which you don't know either.

Can we prove the world is or is not completely deterministic? No, the HUP shows that this is impossible (ie there are limits to our knowledge of the world, thus there may be some deterministic relationships, such as hidden variables, which are in principle undetectable).

Or there may be detctable hidden variables. After all, local hidden variables
could have been detected by the Aspect experiment.

Can we prove the world is or is not at least partly indeterministic? No, again the HUP shows that this is impossible. Any indeterminism we think we observe may simply be a result of epistemic indeterminability (as opposed to ontic indeterminism), as a consequence of the limitations in our knowledge of the world.

Or it may not.

 

[Tournesol]

ntroduction
Some libertarians argue that free will must exist in order to underpin moral responsibility. Compatibilists have developed responses to these arguments which are, up to a point successful. That does not count as a defeat for libertarianism because there are other arguments for free will. Nor do they count as a victory for compatibilism, because they do not account for aspects of the free-will package other than moral responsibility -- for which reason they are known as "semicompatibilist" arguments. We avoided listing the argument from responsibility in our prima_facie argument for free will knowing that there is a semicompatibilist response.

"These arguments which are, up to a point successful" -- up to which point ?

There are five kinds or degrees of responsibility

1. Causal responsibility
2. Semicompatibilist Responsibility Based on Rationality alone
3. Compatibilist Responsibility, Intention and Duress
4. Naturalist Libertarian responsibility Based on Causal Origination of Action
5. Supertnaturalist Libertarian Responsibility

Casual Responsibility
We can say a tree-limb blown off in a storm is responsible for killing someone, but that is hardly moral responsibility. To say something is responsible in this sense is to say no more than that it is a cause. Hence this weakest grade of responsibility is causal responsibility.

The point about moral responsibility is that we hold some entities responsible and not others. A meaningful argument for compatibilism, must be more than a mere convention, it must have an objective basis. The basis is the ability to intentionally originate actions. We do not blame the gun for the murderer, the artist, not her brushes. The sight of Basil Fawlty thrashing his car for failing to start is absurd.
Semicompatibilist Responsibility Based on Rationality
So the compatibilist needs a criterion that objectively picks out agents as being having responsibililty beyond the merely causal responsibility of the brush and the gun -- and the criterion needs to be compatible with determinism. The obvious candidate is rationality. People have rationality whereas guns and brushes don't. Moreover, the criterion justifies the action. It makes sense to praise or condemn rational agents because they can learn from their mistakes -- unlike Basil Fawlty's car. However, this approach says nothing to support the idea that an agent's actions are not "brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances" (otherwise known as AP). Since it attempts to explain responsibility without explaining the freedom of the will it is rightly known as semicompatibilism.

Compatibilist Responsibility, Intention and Duress
The existence of Alternative Possibilities (otherwise known as Elbow Room or could-have-done-otherwise) is relevant to responsibility because we do not hold people for their action where alternate courses of actions were not open to them for reasons of duress or incapacity. Whereas the semicompatibilist only holds responsibility to be compatible with determinism the compatibilist holds that AP's are as well. The compatibilist of course can explain the presence or absence of constraint without making any assumptions about determinism -- up to a point. Her problem is to explain why only certain entities are subject to constraint in the first place. There is something about certain entities which makes them constrainable. In the language of the Libertarian, your will cannot be blocked, stifled or frustrated if you have no will. As we have seen, there is something about human agents that compatabilists can appeal to that picks them our objectively as responsible, and that is rationality. But is rationality something that can be constrained? Surely -- for the libertarian anyway -- what is constrained by circumstance is action, not thought. At this point the compatibilist triumphantly produces intention (aim, desire) as something that can be hindered by external circumstances, and which is compatible with determinism. And this works --up to a point. If you did something you intended to do, you are responsible, and if you did something which was not your intention, it was accidental or under duress. But the intention has to have the right sort of causal history. If the intention "flew into your head" shortly before you performed an action based on it, without being based on previous intentional stated, you action was not responsible -- or rather you are not a responsible person. Equally, our intuition is that people, or other entities, are not responsible if they did not originate their intention. We don't hold people who are acting under hypnotic suggestion responsible. If a mad scientist created an intelligent killing-machine, we would hold him ultimately responsible even if the machine was a sophisticated enough AI to be deemed rational.

Naturalist Libertarian responsibility Based on Causal Origination of Action
That is the essence of the libertarian's claim to be able to provide a stronger basis for our intuitions about responsibility than any variety of compatibilist. The missing factor the libertarian can supply is origination. Responsibility lies with human agents (acting intentionally and without duress) -- the "buck" stops with them -- because that is where the (intention behind the0 action originated.

An indeterministic cause is an event which is not itself the effect of a prior cause. Thus, if you trace a cause-effect chain backwards it will come to a halt at an indeterministic cause; the indeterministic cause stands at the "head" of a cause-effect chain. Thus, such causes can pin down the originative power, of agents.

There are two important things to realize at this point:

Firstly, I am not saying that indeterministic causes correspond one-to-one to human decisions or actions. It takes billions of basic physical events to produce an action or decision. The claim that indeterminism is part of this complex process does not mean that individual decisions are "just random". (As we expand here). We will go onto propose that there are other mechanisms which filter out random impulses, so that there is rational self-control as well as casual originative power, and thus both criteria for UR are met.

Secondly, I am also not saying that indeterminism by itself is a fully sufficient criterion for agenthood. If physical indeterminism is widespread (as argued here), that would attribute free will to all sorts of unlikely agents, such as decaying atoms. Our theory requires some additional criteria. There is no reason why these should not be largely the same criteria used by compatibilists and supercompatibilists -- rule-following rationality, lack of external compulsion, etc. Where their criteria do not go far enough, we can supplement them with UR and AP. Where their criteria attribute free will too widely to entities, our supplementary criteria will narrow the domain.

It is worth mentioning some of the exaggerated, perhaps supernatural ideas that can get confused with indeterminism-based Origination. One is "causa sui", the idea of an entity creating or causing itself out of nothing. Naturalistically this is impossible -- an entity has to exist in the first place to cause something. Associating self-determination with self-causation is a route to a superficially convincing argument against free will, but the tow ideas are really distinct. Self-determination -- self-control -- is not just naturalistically acceptable, it has its own branch of science, cybernetics.

 

[Tournesol]

The Metaphysical Objections: Prime Mammals and Ultimate Responsibility
"Ultimate Responsibility" is a term introduced by the Naturalistic Libertarian Robert Kane. It, and the thinking behind it , have led to some confusion.

"Only a Libertarian account, Kane claims, can provide the features we [...] yearn for, which he calls ultimate Responsibility. Libertarianism begins with a familiar claim: If determinism is true every, then every decision I make, like every breath I take, is an effect, ultimately,, of chains of causes leading back into times before I was born. [...] As many have claimed, then, if my decisions are caused by events leading back before my birth, I can be casually responsible for the results of my deeds in the same way a tree limb falling in a storm can be causally responsible for the results of the death of the person it falls on, but it's not the limb's fault that it was only a strong as it was, or that the wind blew so fiercely, or that the tree grew so close to the footpath. To be morally responsible I have to be the ultimate source of my decision and that can be true only if no earlier influences were sufficient to secure the outcome, which was truly "up to me". Harry Truman used to have a sign on his desk in the Oval office saying the "The Buck Stops Here". The human mind has a place where the buck stops, Kane says, and only libertarianism can provide this kind of free will, the kind that provides Ultimate Responsibility".

(Daniel Dennett, "Freedom Evolves", p99

Let's get one confusion out of the way: the libertarian only needs to claim that responsibility stops with the agent, not that there is a single place within the agent where it stops, or a single time at which it stops.

Dennett has an eloquent series of argumens against a "single place" within the mind where it "all happens", a "homunculus", which he has developed in "Consciousness Explained", and which he re-deploys in "Freedom Evolves".

If it really matters, as Libertarians think, then we had better shield your process of deliberation from all such external influence

Why all ? Our definition of free will is "The power or ability to rationally choose and consciously perform actions, at least some of which are not brought about necessarily and inevitably by external circumstances". "At least some of which" is not "all" there is no need for such "shielding". The engineering is not required by the specification. (Ultimate) Responsibility belongs to the agent as a whole, not to a subsystem within the agent. We are quite happy to accept Dennett's distributed model of the mind.

Compatiblists and determinists are able to argue that it is undesirable for a "snap" decion to be made randomly, since such dcisions need to be reliable -- ineed, they may even be "life or death" decisions. This is far from being a smoking-gun refutation of Libertarianism, however. The libertarian only needs to be able to say that her decision could have been different under the same exernal circumstances at time T. The libertarian's internal state could have been different under the circumstances prevailing at T (In other words, there are sets of possible worlds where everything outside the libertarian is identical), so the action resulting from the libertarian's internal state could have been different, even if it was brought about more-or-less determinstically by their state at time T. Thus they coudl have done otherwise so long as the series of states leading up to the reactive snap decision could have been different. Thus, freedom of the will can, as it were, be stored and used at a later date. (We also argue for this point here; and compare what Dennett says about Libet)

To use another metaphor, it is as though there is a conscious executive which sets "policy" which less conscious sub-systems then follow in making snap decisions. In an organisation, responsibility stops with the executive who sets policy, rather than the junior staff member who implements it. Likewise people are held morally and legally responsible for acts which are snap decisions, because they have trained themselves to react in that particular way.

However, this idea of stored inentionallity (or deferred responsibility) has some problems, whcih we will now consider.

Dennett has a real point against Kane with his accusation that there is a special time at which free will occurs. In Kane's theory the essence of free will is something called a "self forming action" which occurs at particular times in the life of an individual. This leads to a number of problems:

* 1 An SFA may or may not occur at all in an individual, yet by all common-sense standards an individual without SFA's is as free and responsible as anyone else.
* 2 Since SFA's are the essence of an individual's free will, they must also be the essence of an individual's responsibility. Yet they are indeterministic -- mere caprice!
* 3 There must have been a first SFA , which itself cannot have been brought about intentionally, freely and responsibly.

First Objection to Self-Forming Actions
An SFA may or may not occur at all in an individual, yet by all common-sense standards an individual without SFA's is as free and responsible as anyone else. This is a valid objection to SFA One of the innovations of our approach will be to replace Kane's isolated SFA's with an "ongoing process of self-formation" which all physically and psychologically normal adults engage in.
Second Objection to Self-Forming Actions
Since SFA's are the essence of an individual's free will, they must also be the essence of an individual's responsibility. Yet they are indeterministic -- mere caprice! This is a very important objection which gets to the heart of what people dislike about indeterminism-based free will. Bear in mind that we have accepted Dennett's point about the distributed mind. It is the agent as a whole who is responsible, not the any particular part of the agent, including any "indeterminism" module the agent might possess. The agents actions are not caused by any particular neuron, or any particular subsystem, but by the central nervous system acting in concert. An "indeterminism" module would therefore not cause actions, simpliciter, any more than any other module.

Moreover, in our model we posit another module in addition to the indeterminism module (or Random Idea Generator) whose function is specifically to "filter" the output of the Random Idea Generator. Thus the objection that you cannot control which signal the indeterminism module is going to generate is vitiated by placing the control after the generation of the signal. (Just as Natural Selection rescues Darwinian evolution from being mere caprice by acting on genes after they have mutated). There is no straightforward inference from a lack of causal responsibility for one's indeterminism generator to a lack of moral responsibility an agent

Finally, recall that in our discussion of semicompatibilism and responsibility we agreed that there are forms of moral responsibility which are compatible with determinism. Thus, responsibility does not kick in when and only when the R.I.G or indeterminism module fires; responsibility is not created ex nihilo. 3
Third Objection to Self-Forming Actions
There must have been a first SFA , which itself cannot have been brought about intentionally, freely and responsibly. It's important to understand the difference between a regress and an infinite regress. Earlier, we said:

And this works --up to a point. If you did something you intended to do, you are responsible, and if you did something which was not your intention, it was accidental or under duress. But the intention has to have the right sort of causal history. If the intention "flew into your head" shortly before you performed an action based on it, without being based on previous intentional stated, you action was not responsible -- or rather you are not a responsible person. Equally, our intuition is that people, or other entities, are not responsible if they did not originate their intention. We don't hold people who are acting under hypnotic suggestion responsible. If a mad scientist created an intelligent killing-machine, we would hold him ultimately responsible even if the machine was a sophisticated enough AI to be deemed rational.

Since we must exclude capricious intentional states, states that do not have enough of history of being produced intentionally by previous states. Thus, there must be some kind of a regress to intetional states. Dennett has a parable that can act as a warning of what happens if you think about regresses in a too rigid, absolute way. it also illustrates that this is indeed a structural problem about regresses, not a problem about free will specifically).

"You may think you're a mammal, and that dogs and cows and whales are mammals, but there really aren't any mammals at all -- there can't be! Here's a philosophical argument to prove it.

1) Every mammal has a mammal for a mother
2) If there have been any mammals at all, there have been only a finite number of mammals
3) but if there has been even one mammal, by (1), there has been an infinity of mammals , which contradicts (2), so there can't have been any mammals.

Since we know perfectly well there are mammals, we take this argument only a challenge to discover what fallacy is lurking within it. [..] A gradual transition occurred from clear mammals to clear reptiles, with a lot of hard-to-classify intermediaries filling the gaps "

(Daniel Dennett, "Freedom Evolves", p126)

The absolutist way of thinking about things falls on the "infinite" side of the dichotomy. For the absolutist, and intentional state has to be fully and 1005 brought about by the preceding state...ad infinitum.

Kane's SFA's fall on the other side ...the regress just stops dead.

We favour the kind of solution that is the correct solution to the Prime Mammal problem. The parent of a mammal only needs to be more-or-less mammalian. The mammalhood can fade out as you trace things go back. Likewise the "at least partially" clause in the definition of free will allows us to regard present intentional states as being only more-or-less engendered by previous ones, so that the causal and intentional history of an intentional state peters out rather than going back forever or stopping dead.

Note that we are now equipped with a variety of ways of dealing with the regress problem:-

1. Libertarian responsibility does not arise out of nothing, it arises out of semicompatibilist responsibility.
2. There is no requirement that every intentional state is brought about 100% intentionally by the preceding state.
3. There is no need to identify "you", your "self" with any particular module, including the "indeterminism module".
4. There is no one-to-one correspondence between actions and the output of the "indeterminism module", so actions are not "just random".
5. The fact that you cannot control what your "indeterminism" module will do is vitiated by the fact that you -- the rest of you -- do not have to act on its decisions.

The Empirical Objection:Does Benjamin Libet's Research Empirically Disprove Free Will?
Scientifically informed sceptics about FW often quote a famous experiment by Benjamin Libet, which supposedly shows that a kind of signal called a "Readiness Potential", detectable by electrodes, precedes a conscious decisions, and is a reliable indicator of the decision, and thus -- so the claim goes -- indicates that our decisions are not ours but made for us by unconscious processes.

In fact, Libet himself doesn't draw a sweepingly sceptical conclusion from his own results. For one thing, Readiness Potentials are not always followed by actions. he believes it is possible for consciousness to intervene with a "veto" to the action:

"The initiation of the freely voluntary act appears to begin in the brain unconsciously, well before the person consciously knows he wants to act! Is there, then, any role for conscious will in the performing of a voluntary act?...To answer this it must be recognised that conscious will (W) does appear about 150milliseconds before the muscle is activated, even though it follows the onset of the RP. An interval of 150msec would allow enough time in which the conscious function might affect the final outcome of the volitional process."

(Libet, quoted in "Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 230 )

"This suggests our conscious minds may not have free will but rather free won't!"

(V.S Ramachandran, quoted in "Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 231 )

However, it is quite possible that the Libertarian doesn't need to appeal to "free won't" to avoid the conclusion that free won't doesn't exist.

Libet tells when the RP occurs using electrodes. But how does Libet he when conscious decision-making occurs ? He relies on the subject reporting the position of the hand of a clock. But, as Dennett points out, this is only a report of where it seems to the subject that various things come together, not of the objective time at which they occur.

Suppose Libet knows that your readiness potential peaked at second 6,810 of the experimental trial, and the clock dot was straight down (which is what you reported you saw) at millisecond 7,005. How many milliseconds should he have to add to this number to get the time you were conscious of it? The light gets from your clock face to your eyeball almost instantaneously, but the path of the signals from retina through lateral geniculate nucleus to striate cortex takes 5 to 10 milliseonds -- a paltry fraction of the 300 milliseconds offset, but how much longer does it take them to get to you. (Or are you located in the striate cortex?) The visual signals have to be processed before they arrive at wherever they need to arrive for you to make a conscious decision of simultaneity. Libet's method presupposes, in short, that we can locate the intersection of two trajectories: # the rising-to-consciousness of signals representing the decision to flick # the rising to consciousness of signals representing successive clock-face orientations so that these events occur side-by-side as it were in place where their simultaneity can be noted.

("Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 231 )

Dennett refers to an experiment in which Churchland showed, that just pressing a button when asked to signal when you see a flash of light takes a normal subject about 350 milliseconds.

Does that mean that all actions taking longer than that are unconcsious ?

The brain processes stimuli over time, and the amount of time depends on which information is being extracted for which purposes. A top tennis player can set up to design a return of service within 100 milliseconds or so. The 78 feet from base line to base line can be traversed by a serve from Venus Williams [...] in less than 450 milliseconds [...] And since the precise timing and shape of that return depends critically on visual information and put it to highly appropriate use in that short a time. As Churchland showed, just pressing a button when asked to signal when you see a flash of light takes a normal subject about 350 milliseconds.

("Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 238 )

Our lives are full of decisions to act when the time is ripe, revisable commitments to policies, and attitudes that will shape responses that must be executed top swiftly to be reflectively considered in the light of actions.

("Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 239 )

The timing tricks usually fit together seamlessly and are incorporated into the brain's own monitoring of what it is up to, but in artificial circumstances (as set up by clever experimenters) the tricks can be exposed.

("Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 239 )

It is important to separate the idea that of an action being done (or not) by you, being consciously done (or not) by you, and the being done (or not) by you at a moment in time. The Tennis player who reacts too quickly to have made a conscious decision is reacting too quickly to have made a decision at that time. On the other hand, their decisions is not unwelcome or unexpected. It feels like their decision. And why should it not when it is the outcome of long practice, practice of the kind that is necessary to fulfill any tasks that requires precise timing, such as sport or music. The consciousness of the decision comes from the consncious decision to train oneself to react in a certain way. The consciousness of the act is stored, and pre-prepared, and using it we can perform feats where Libet's 300m sec. delay would be quite unacceptable.

One thing going for this hypothesis is that such judgments of simultaneity are unnatural acts in the first place, unless they are framed for a particular purpose, such as your trying to get your staccato attack in sync with the conductor's downbeat, or trying to connect with a low fastball so a to send it straight back over the pitcher's head.

("Freedom Evolves" by Daniel Dennett, p. 235 )

Dennett's idea of "stored" conscious volition is quite in line with our theory. Indeed, we would like to extend it in a way that Dennett does not. We would like to extend it to stored indeterminism. Any decision we make in exigent situations where we do not have the luxury of considered thought must be more-or-less deterministic -- must be more-or-less determined by our state of mind at the time - -if they are to be of any use at all to us. Otherwise we might as well toss a coin. But our state of mind at the time can be formed by rumination, training and so over a long period, perhaps over a lifetime. As such it can contain elements of indeterminism in the positive sense -- of imagination and creativity, not mere caprice.

This extension of Dennett's criticism of Libet (or rather the way Libet's results are used by free-will sceptics) gives us a way of answering Dennett's own criticisms of Robert Kane, a prominent defender of naturalistic Free Will. PDJ 14/9/06

 

[moving finger]

Hi Tournesol

If there is no ultimate responsibiity (as defined by kane and myself), then it makes no sense to punish the shooter and not the gun -- they are both causally repsonsible.
Is that the conclusion you wish to draw ?

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of punishment. It makes no sense to punish anything if all we seek is “revenge” (whether UR exists or not). The only meaningful purpose of punishment is to act deterministically to influence future behaviour. Punishing a “gun” will not affect the future behaviour of the gun, but punishing a person may affect the future behaviour of the person (or of similar people), regardless of UR. Punishment thus has absolutely nothing to do with UR.

How fortunate that I have written an elaborate defence of UR, isntead of just
saying that I believ in it.

You have failed to show that UR is coherent, you have failed to show that your definition of free will entails UR, you have failed to show that your so-called Darwinian model possesses UR. Is this what you call an elaborate defence?

Compatiblists think people are responsible for their actions. You, apparently, don't. Unless you mean
something different from Kane and myself by "UR"

You again are confusing responsibility simpliciter with ultimate responsibility. I believe people are responsible simpliciter for their actions, as do compatibilists. But ultimate responsibility is an incoherent notion.

Huh ? Did you mean to write that ?

Yes.

Why not ?

Because UR entails infinite regress.

People can't have responsibility
attributed to them unless they already have had responsibility attributed to them ? That barely
makes sense.

You are confusing UR and responsibility simpliciter again.

UR isn't a thing that is created like bile in the bile duct. We hold agents repsonsible, and
may or may not propose mechanism that justiy that nonarbitrarily.

You are confusing UR and responsibility simpliciter again.
Falling tiles were “responsible” for the Columbia shuttle disaster, but we woild not claim the tiles possessed UR.

It is only UR if it is something more that causal responsibility.

What “more”? Randomness?

The objective mechanism for UR is of course the RIG/SIS mechanism.

The RIG/SIS does not give rise to UR.

Discussed here:

This does not show that UR is present

It posits soemthing close to that. It certainly doesn't posit that reptiles can give
brith to mammals.

It posits neither.

The parents of a mammal must be more-or-less mammalian,
and to be a responsible agent, you must be able to more-or-less exert control over your future
state of mind.

The analogy is false.
If I am not UR, at least partially, for the antecedent state N-1 which leads to state N, then I cannot be UR, even partially, for state N (even Kane agrees with this). A little bit of thinking will show you this leads to infinite regress.

You are evading the point. I have shown how my theory does not incur infinite regresses.

You are the one evading the point – you have not shown how your theory or model gives rise to UR. You simply claim that it does, without evidence.

which is a regress...but not an infinite one. Only infintie regresses are problemantic.

Show how the regress can be terminated.

It tapers off

It never reaches zero, which is the whole point. You cannot generate partial UR from zero UR.

The same way Prime Mammals are, as I have pointed out several times.

Which is a false analogy, as I have pointed out several times. A false analogy proves absolutely nothing. The precise point at which mammals first arose in the animal kingdom is an arbitrary point that would have to be decided using subjective human judgement, there is no objective basis for determining this point. Are you saying the same for your UR?

Best Regards

 

[moving finger]

Hi Tournesol

As usual, we are repeating the same things over and over again. It seems we are failing to communicate. I see no point in repeating the same old arguments again and again, hence have abbreviated my response.

The fact that you are not in control-of-your-control does not mean
that someone else is. It just means the process of control is a "at a least partial" "more or less"
thing.

Wrong. Your "control" must follow some algorithm. Either you created the algorithm (ie you are in control of your control), or the algorithm was somehow created "for you", outside of your control (ie it was either created by someone else, by something else, or has simply an indeterministic cause). If the algorithm for your control was somehow created "for you" outside of your control then how can you possibly claim to have ultimate control? The only way you can claim ultimate control over your actions is if indeed you have control over your control over your control ad infinituum. It's exactly the same problem as with UR.

But it would be a very fancy theromometer. AI researchers
have been chasing human-style rationallity for decades.

A simple machine which behaves rationally yet not completely predictably would in fact be very easy to construct. That machine could operate in the same way as your RIG/SIS. But nobody (apart perhaps from yourself) would claim that such a simple machine possesed UR.

I am assuming people are responsible for their actions.

Confusing UR with responsibility simpliciter again

Indeterminism entails Causal Originative Power, which is one of the
two components of the mechanism for UR. The other is rationallity which is also given in the definition.

How can I be held responsible for something which is indeterministic hence not under my control?

Yes it does, in the same way that "at least partly mammalian" does?

That false analogy again.

To be repsonsible is not the same as being causally responsible.

Direct causal responsibility is not required, I agree, but there must be at least some unbroken indirect chain of cause and effect over which I have control, otherwise I cannot possibly be reasonably held responsible.

How can I be responsible for some X unless I have at least some causal influence over whether X occurs or not?

Perhaps you could give an example where an agent can reasonably be held responsible for an event X when there is absolutely no possibility of a causal relationship between the agent and the causally antecedent states of event X?

But my theory isn't the same ans Kane's!

Your “theory” contains the same kinds of fundamental errors as Kane’s (ie it assumes UR arises from nothing, without showing exactly and coherently how this is supposed to work)

Best Regards

 

[moving finger]

Hi Tournesol

Lots of words, but you still have not addressed the fundamental problem : You have not shown how UR can “switch on” within an agent if UR is totally absent at some point in the agent’s antecedent states. The RIG/SIS certainly does not create UR. Your claim to UR is therefore based on unsubstantiated belief – ie faith – and not reason.

1. Libertarian responsibility does not arise out of nothing, it arises out of semicompatibilist responsibility.

Semicompatibilist responsibility does not entail UR, but libertarian responsibility does entail UR. You have not shown how we can go from “no UR” to “UR” (you simply claim, or assume, that it can somehow come about, presumably via some supernatural mechanism?)

2. There is no requirement that every intentional state is brought about 100% intentionally by the preceding state.

But there IS a requirement that I must be at least partially UR for each intentional state in the string of states – UR cannot “switch on” if UR is totally absent in antecedent states.

Best Regards

 

[moving finger]

To be UR or Not to be UR, that is the question

In the below explanation, we refer to the attached figures.

Each state (of the agent) is either causally related to one or more antecedent states (such as states N, N-2, N-5, N-9 in figure 1 attached), or it has no causal relationship whatsoever with any antecedent states (such as state N-14 in figure 1 attached).

If there is no causally antecedent state for any given state X, the agent cannot be held ultimately responsible (UR) for that particular state X. In figure 1, for example, the agent cannot be held ultimately responsible for state N-14, because to be ultimately responsible for state N-14 the agent would also need to be (at least partially) ultimately responsible for at least one of the causally antecedent states to N-14, and there are none.

It is easy to see that this leads to infinite regress for UR. The only way that the agent can possesses UR for state N is if there is a never-ending string of causally-related antecedent states to N, each of which the agent possesses at least partial UR for.

Now, Tournesol claims that his RIG/SIS model creates UR from absence of UR. We can see from figure 2, also attached, why Tournesol’s model does not (cannot) work.

Referring to figure 2, here the RIG provides an indeterministic input (ie the RIG has no causally antecedent states) to the SIS. The RIG cannot therefore be a source of UR. The only way that UR can arise in the RIG/SIS combination is therefore if the agent possesses UR for the SIS; but this would entail a never-ending string of UR for each of the causally antecedent states of the SIS. Again, we are forced into infinite regress.

Tournesol insists either that his model creates UR (but he does not show exactly how), or that UR somehow mysteriously "fades in" from nothing. He is in fact unable to show that UR is present in his model at all - we are asked simply to believe that the UR is in there somewhere (an article of faith).

But it should be quite clear that there is in fact no naturalistic escape from this infinite regress. The only solutions are therefore as follows :

Either (1) UR arises within an agent via some mysterious, inexplicable, supernaturalistic process
Or (2) UR is present in a never-ending string of causally antecedent states, right back to the Big Bang
Or (3) UR does not exist

There does not seem to be any alternative to the three options above.

(1) is unacceptable both to Tournesol and myself (though in practice Tournesol's defence of UR basically amounts to a supernaturalistic defence, since he is unable to give a rational account of how and why UR would be created in his model).
(2) is unacceptable at least to me, and I doubt if Tournesol would defend (2)
Logically therefore we are left with (3).

Best Regards

 

[selfAdjoint]

If there is no causally antecedent state for any given state X, the agent cannot be held ultimately responsible (UR) for that particular state X. In figure 1, for example, the agent cannot be held ultimately responsible for state N-14, because to be ultimately responsible for state N-14 the agent would also need to be (at least partially) ultimately responsible for at least one of the causally antecedent states to N-14, and there are none.

This is the "step" part of the mathematical induction I suggested brfore. But you do not seem to have motivated it, much less shown it. Why cannot the agent be UR for N14 directly? In your model, N14 is an uncaused state; fine. If there are such states accessible to the agent then it why can it not be responsible for them? Indeed this is the core of some accounts of free will I have seen, that they are, as one might say, in themselves primary causes.

 

[Tournesol]

Agents are responsible if they are under no external constraint,
and able to refrain from acting on impulses -- whether those
impulses are generated determinsitically or indeterminstically.

 

[moving finger]

Why cannot the agent be UR for N14 directly? In your model, N14 is an uncaused state; fine. If there are such states accessible to the agent then it why can it not be responsible for them? Indeed this is the core of some accounts of free will I have seen, that they are, as one might say, in themselves primary causes.

Why can't the agent possesses UR for an uncaused state? Simply because this directly contradicts the meaning of responsibility! Not even Tournesol goes so far as to claim that an agent possesses responsibility for all of the random states generated by his RIG (otherwise he would not need to insert the SIS, he could simply use the naked random state as his source of ultimate responsibility). See Tournesol's post #73 - he is not claiming that responsibility arises simply from arbitrary indeterministic events per se, he is instead (quite rightly) claiming that responsibility arises instead through exercising causal control over the consequent events arising from those indeterministic events, but what he fails to see is that this causal explanation (which is indeed quite correct) leads to infinite causal regress for UR.

You would seem to be arguing here for my suggested solution (1) :

UR arises within an agent via some mysterious, inexplicable, supernaturalistic process

In effect, this is also the solution proposed by both Tournesol and Kane. Both would deny that each of their explanations is supernatural, but I disagree. Neither Kane nor Tournesol have shown how their explanations can give rise to UR where no UR is present in the first place - they simply claim it as an article of faith. Hence, supernatural.

Indeed, solution (1) is probably the only solution open to the libertarian (since neither infinite regress nor denial of the existence of UR would be acceptable under libertarian beliefs). That some libertarians deny supernaturalism is not enough however - they need to present a rational account of how their magic works if we are to accept the account as being naturalistic.

Perhaps we need to start again with some simple definitions.

Responsibility simpliciter : An agent can be said to possesses responsibility simpliciter for some event X if the agent possesses some degree of causal control related to event X, ie the agent possesses the ability either to cause X, or to prevent X from coming about. It follows from this that an agent who possesses neither the ability to cause X, nor to prevent X from coming about, cannot be said to possesses responsibility simpliciter for event X. An agent who does not possesses responsibility simpliciter for an event X cannot be held ultimately responsible for event X.

Uncaused state : A state which has no antecedent causal states, a state which has neither deterministic nor probabilistic relationships with any other antecedent states, for example a genuinely indeterministic event.

An uncaused state is thus by definition a state over which I have absolutely no causal control. If I have no causal control over X, I cannot by definition possesses responsibility for X.

With respect, the onus is on the person claiming that such a mechanism (whereby I can be held responsible for an uncaused state) is coherent, to actually demonstrate the coherency - because logically one cannot be held responsible for an event over which one has absolutely no causal control. Even Kane agrees with this, and even Tournesol implicitly agrees with this (otherwise he could claim UR arises directly and explicitly from every random idea generated from his RIG, and he would not need to insert his SIS in an attempt to generate UR).

Are you perhaps claiming that one can be held responsible for an event over which one has absolutely no causal control?

There is no naturalistic mechanism whereby the agent can possesses UR for state N-14 directly - we need to appeal to the supernatural. If you believe there is a valid naturalistic mechanism then please do explain how you think it works? Tournesol's suggested RIG/SIS mechanism does not work in this respect (if he would simply argue that UR arises from an initial uncaused state, a la Kane with his SFAs, then we could move on with the argument, but that is not the basis of his argument - he is instead suggesting that UR mysteriously "fades in").

How can an uncaused state arise in the first place except via either an indeterministic or a supernatural mechanism? If indeterministic, how can I logically be held responsible for a state which arises via an indeterministic mechanism over which I have absolutely no control?

If you could explain this we would be making progress! If this cannot be explained then the notion that I can be held reponsible for an uncaused state (as demonstrated above by analysing the meanings of responsibility and uncaused state respectively) is incoherent.

Best Regards

 

[moving finger]

Agents are responsible if they are under no external constraint,
and able to refrain from acting on impulses -- whether those
impulses are generated determinsitically or indeterminstically.

A genuinely indeterministic event by definition has no causal antecedents, in other words there is no causal relationship (either strictly deterministic, or probabilistic) between an indeterministic event and any antecedent events.

An agent cannot be held responsible for an event X over which that agent cannot exercise at least some form of (deterministic or probabilistic) causal control (to either bring X about, or to prevent X from happening). Since an indeterministic event is, by definition, an event which has no causal antecedents, no agent can exercise any form of causal control over such an event. Thus no agent can be held responsible for a genuinely indeterministic event. Thus indeterministic events cannot be the "source" of the chain of responsibility.

Best Regards

 

[moving finger]

So, projecting backwards:-
N is 90% intentionally brought about by N-1
N is 81% intentionally brought about by N-2
N is 73% intentionally brought about by N-3
N is 59% intentionally brought about by N-4
N is 47% intentionally brought about by N-5
N is 43% intentionally brought about by N-6
N is 33% intentionally brought about by N-7
N is 31% intentionally brought about by N-8
N is 28% intentionally brought about by N-9
N is 25% intentionally brought about by N-10
N is 23% intentionally brought about by N-11
N is 20% intentionally brought about by N-12
N is 18% intentionally brought about by N-13
N is 17% intentionally brought about by N-14
N is 14% intentionally brought about by N-15
N is 12% intentionally brought about by N-16
N is 10% intentionally brought about by N-17

etc etc.

It tapers off

If I am only 10% responsible for state N-17, and state N-17 is the single causal antecedent of state N-16, how does it come about (ie what is the mechanism whereby) I can be MORE responsible for state N-16 than I am for state N-17? Can you provide a logically coherent explanation (ie a rational explanatory mechanism) as to why my degree of responsibility should increase within a simple linear sequence of directly causally related states?

Logically if I am only 10% responsible for state N-17, and state N-17 is the only causally antecedent state to state N-16 (ie there is a direct causal relationship between N-17 and N-16), then I also cannot be any more than 10% responsible for state N-16. Unless you can provide a logical explanation as to why my responsibility increases in this step?

Best Regards

 

[metacristi]

Is quantum mechanics deterministic? It argues that probabilistic events occur, does it not? However, if these events occur, couldn't one say that the result of a probabilistic event was not caused? If it was caused, it would be determined and not probabilistic, would it not? Given this assumption, does quantum mechanics believe in randomness? If randomness is the absence of causation, how can one argue logically that something can happen without giving a causation?

Thanks,

Very Confused

I don't think we can argue [from existing evidence] against some sort of causation and the existence of clear laws at quantum level. As Paul C. W. Davies argues well the atomic level is not completely anarchic many reactions and transformations, perfectly possible at the conceptual level otherwise, never happen there (no one has ever seen for example protons transforming into positrons or electrons into neutrinos) there are some clear laws then.

Further the claim that no better description of the state vector exist because there are no hidden variables is too strong, at most we can argue that some quantum events are without cause (this without rejecting hidden variables or the possibility of exact laws at quantum level - no matter whether we are able to find them or not).

Karl Popper argues exactly in this direction, without claiming however that he solved the problem (strict determinism, meaning here that all events have causes, is basically non falsifiable indeed). In his view there are some uncaused events (important for conscious experience, accounting for the spontaneity of human thought) but this does not mean for example that we have to reject the possible existence of clear laws ‘governing’ the two slit experiment (even if these laws will remain forever God’s secret to use a cliche used by some copenhagenists). In other words we can defend [from what we know today] at most a weak form of indeterminism (some events at quantum level are uncaused) but we cannot ignore causality and the possible existence of strict laws at quantum level.

[To be more exact Popper denies the total and exact determination of future events by present events; in this view we can even avoid saying that there are really uncaused events, all that is required for indeterminism is the existence of some events, no matter how small, without a strict predetermination. But, in my view, I don't think we can really avoid talking of uncaused events as much as some of the attributes in the effect do not depend on the cause(s)].

Finally given that we deal with a genuine underdetermination in the case of the interpretation of the mathematical formalism of QM we cannot exclude from the equation strict determinism (all effects have causes). The so called hidden variables interpretations of QM (Bohm’s version for example is strictly deterministic) are far from being falsified (in spite of some dogmatics, even among scientists) and strict determinism (in the sense that all events have causes) is still with us be it linked with contextualism. The determinism vs indeterminism debate still rage (determinism is fully compatible even with Bell's theorem and Aspect's experiment) maybe time will settle things.

PS: By the way probabilistic descriptions are compatible with both strict determinism (it is different from the capacity of making accurate, non probabilistic, predictions) and indeterminism (at least one event in the universe is uncaused).

PPS: I used the construction 'strict determinism' (meaning only that all effects have causes) to make the difference from 'strong determinism' (all events have necessary causes; if we could somehow 'run' the Universe from the beginning exactly the same things would happen) and Mill's 'weak determinism' (events are caused but things could have been otherwise). But personally I don't see how 'things could have been otherwise' without resorting to indeterminism, no matter how insignifiantly [from the acepted scientific knowledge at least]...

 

[Tournesol]

Why not? Nothing has intrinsically unique properties under physicalism, just complex combinations of a few basic properties like mass and charge.

Every physical object has properties which emerge from the detailed configuration of component parts. The height of a chair is a property of that chair, but it is not simply related to the mass and charge of it’s constituent molecules – it depends critically on how those constituents are put together. Consciousness is such an emergent property, but unlike the height of a chair, each consciousness is unique because each consciousness emerges from the detailed internal configuration of the brain.

And the detailed integral configuration is physically determinable in principle,
so consiocusness is not beyond physical investifation (in principle).

But even if possible (which from the above looks unlikely), perfect replication does not entail predicting my experience of the colour red from a 3rd person perspective.

Of course it is possible to replicate the experiencing agent, and if this is what you mean by algorithmic prediction then of course this is possible - but it's no longer a mathematical model or description, it's a carbon copy. But even a carbon copy would not perfectly replicate my conscious experience, because that carbon copy occupies a different position in spacetime to the position that I occupy (hence a different perspective on the world), and from the moment of creation its conscious experience and mine would begin to diverge.

In ways which are predictable, in principle, if physicalism is true.

I assume this is a mistake. Are you suggesting that physicalism entails predictability? In which case (according to you) in an indeterminable (let alone an indeterministic) world physicalism is most definitely not true?

It is not a mistake. You claimed that a copy would diverge from the original as the result
of being in a different location. I said those changes would be predictable.
I did not say divergences due to indeterminism would be unpredictable. You did
not say divergence would occur because of indeterminism.

inability to explain qualia doesn't come from some special status of consciousness, it obviously comes from a deep limitation on language

It has to be a combination of the two, since language can describe some things perfectly well.

I think Tournesol may have (perhaps unintentionally) hit the nail on the head with his earlier reference to the theory-ladenness of observation. Quine argues that everything one observes is interpreted through a prior understanding of other theories and concepts. Whenever we describe observations (whether we are using the English language, or mathematics), we are constantly utilizing terms and measurements that our society has adopted. Therefore, it would be impossible for someone else to understand these observations if they are unfamiliar with, or disagree with, the theories that these terms come from.

And possible if they do. Which, of course, amounts to possibility in principle.
The theory-ladenness of observation is really about instrumentation, not
sensory perception -- you need a certain amount of theory to understand how
a thermometer works. Even if you want to extend the idea
to the communicability of qualia, you run into some strange predictions:
* People who (nearly) agree in theoretical outlook should find their qualia (nearly) communicable -- they don't.
* Naive people with little theoretical understanding of anything should find their qualia (nearly) communicable -- they don't.
* Novel qualia with little theoretical baggage should be easily communicable -- they aren't.
* Theory-ladenness applies to external phenomena too, but doesn't produce the same problems.

Now extend this to the attempted description or interpretation of a 1st person perspective on phenomenal consciousness. There is nowhere to start, because by definition a 1st person perspective on phenomenal consciousness does not share any terms that we might use in such a description with anyone else. In short, there exists (in principle) no common language with which we can describe or interpret phenomenal consciousness.

 

[Tournesol]

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the purpose of punishment. It makes no sense to punish anything if all we seek is “revenge” (whether UR exists or not). The only meaningful purpose of punishment is to act deterministically to influence future behaviour. Punishing a “gun” will not affect the future behaviour of the gun, but punishing a person may affect the future behaviour of the person (or of similar people), regardless of UR. Punishment thus has absolutely nothing to do with UR.

There is more than one theory of what "makes sense" with respect to morality,
crime and punishment. You favourite theory is not "just true".

It is only UR if it is something more that causal responsibility.

What more? Randomness?

The existence of Alternative Possibilities (otherwise known as Elbow Room or could-have-done-otherwise) is relevant to responsibility because we do not hold people for their action where alternate courses of actions were not open to them for reasons of duress or incapacity. Whereas the semicompatibilist only holds responsibility to be compatible with determinism the compatibilist holds that AP's are as well. The compatibilist of course can explain the presence or absence of constraint without making any assumptions about determinism -- up to a point. Her problem is to explain why only certain entities are subject to constraint in the first place. There is something about certain entities which makes them constrainable. In the language of the Libertarian, your will cannot be blocked, stifled or frustrated if you have no will. As we have seen, there is something about human agents that compatabilists can appeal to that picks them our objectively as responsible, and that is rationality. But is rationality something that can be constrained? Surely -- for the libertarian anyway -- what is constrained by circumstance is action, not thought. At this point the compatibilist triumphantly produces intention (aim, desire) as something that can be hindered by external circumstances, and which is compatible with determinism. And this works --up to a point. If you did something you intended to do, you are responsible, and if you did something which was not your intention, it was accidental or under duress. But the intention has to have the right sort of causal history. If the intention "flew into your head" shortly before you performed an action based on it, without being based on previous intentional stated, you action was not responsible -- or rather you are not a responsible person. Equally, our intuition is that people, or other entities, are not responsible if they did not originate their intention. We don't hold people who are acting under hypnotic suggestion responsible. If a mad scientist created an intelligent killing-machine, we would hold him ultimately responsible even if the machine was a sophisticated enough AI to be deemed rational.

Naturalist Libertarian responsibility Based on Causal Origination of Action
That is the essence of the libertarian's claim to be able to provide a stronger basis for our intuitions about responsibility than any variety of compatibilist. The missing factor the libertarian can supply is origination. Responsibility lies with human agents (acting intentionally and without duress) -- the "buck" stops with them -- because that is where the (intention behind the0 action originated.

The RIG/SIS does not give rise to UR.

Since SFA's are the essence of an individual's free will, they must also be the essence of an individual's responsibility. Yet they are indeterministic -- mere caprice! This is a very important objection which gets to the heart of what people dislike about indeterminism-based free will. Bear in mind that we have accepted Dennett's point about the distributed mind. It is the agent as a whole who is responsible, not the any particular part of the agent, including any "indeterminism" module the agent might possess. The agents actions are not caused by any particular neuron, or any particular subsystem, but by the central nervous system acting in concert. An "indeterminism" module would therefore not cause actions, simpliciter, any more than any other module.

Moreover, in our model we posit another module in addition to the indeterminism module (or Random Idea Generator) whose function is specifically to "filter" the output of the Random Idea Generator. Thus the objection that you cannot control which signal the indeterminism module is going to generate is vitiated by placing the control after the generation of the signal. (Just as Natural Selection rescues Darwinian evolution from being mere caprice by acting on genes after they have mutated). There is no straightforward inference from a lack of causal responsibility for one's indeterminism generator to a lack of moral responsibility an agent

Finally, recall that in our discussion of semicompatibilism and responsibility we agreed that there are forms of moral responsibility which are compatible with determinism. Thus, responsibility does not kick in when and only when the R.I.G or indeterminism module fires; responsibility is not created ex nihilo. 3

The parents of a mammal must be more-or-less mammalian,
and to be a responsible agent, you must be able to more-or-less exert control over your future
state of mind.

The analogy is false.
If I am not UR, at least partially, for the antecedent state N-1 which leads to state N, then I cannot be UR, even partially, for state N (even Kane agrees with this). A little bit of thinking will show you this leads to infinite regress.

Third Objection to Self-Forming Actions
There must have been a first SFA , which itself cannot have been brought about intentionally, freely and responsibly. It's important to understand the difference between a regress and an infinite regress. Earlier, we said:

And this works --up to a point. If you did something you intended to do, you are responsible, and if you did something which was not your intention, it was accidental or under duress. But the intention has to have the right sort of causal history. If the intention "flew into your head" shortly before you performed an action based on it, without being based on previous intentional stated, you action was not responsible -- or rather you are not a responsible person. Equally, our intuition is that people, or other entities, are not responsible if they did not originate their intention. We don't hold people who are acting under hypnotic suggestion responsible. If a mad scientist created an intelligent killing-machine, we would hold him ultimately responsible even if the machine was a sophisticated enough AI to be deemed rational.

Since we must exclude capricious intentional states, states that do not have enough of history of being produced intentionally by previous states. Thus, there must be some kind of a regress to intetional states. Dennett has a parable that can act as a warning of what happens if you think about regresses in a too rigid, absolute way. it also illustrates that this is indeed a structural problem about regresses, not a problem about free will specifically).

"You may think you're a mammal, and that dogs and cows and whales are mammals, but there really aren't any mammals at all -- there can't be! Here's a philosophical argument to prove it.

1) Every mammal has a mammal for a mother
2) If there have been any mammals at all, there have been only a finite number of mammals
3) but if there has been even one mammal, by (1), there has been an infinity of mammals , which contradicts (2), so there can't have been any mammals.

Since we know perfectly well there are mammals, we take this argument only a challenge to discover what fallacy is lurking within it. [..] A gradual transition occurred from clear mammals to clear reptiles, with a lot of hard-to-classify intermediaries filling the gaps "

(Daniel Dennett, "Freedom Evolves", p126)

The absolutist way of thinking about things falls on the "infinite" side of the dichotomy. For the absolutist, and intentional state has to be fully and 1005 brought about by the preceding state...ad infinitum.

Kane's SFA's fall on the other side ...the regress just stops dead.

We favour the kind of solution that is the correct solution to the Prime Mammal problem. The parent of a mammal only needs to be more-or-less mammalian. The mammalhood can fade out as you trace things go back. Likewise the "at least partially" clause in the definition of free will allows us to regard present intentional states as being only more-or-less engendered by previous ones, so that the causal and intentional history of an intentional state peters out rather than going back forever or stopping dead.

Note that we are now equipped with a variety of ways of dealing with the regress problem:-

1. Libertarian responsibility does not arise out of nothing, it arises out of semicompatibilist responsibility.
2. There is no requirement that every intentional state is brought about 100% intentionally by the preceding state.
3. There is no need to identify "you", your "self" with any particular module, including the "indeterminism module".
4. There is no one-to-one correspondence between actions and the output of the "indeterminism module", so actions are not "just random".
5. The fact that you cannot control what your "indeterminism" module will do is vitiated by the fact that you -- the rest of you -- do not have to act on its decisions.
As usual, we are repeating the same things over and over again. It seems we are failing to communicate. I see no point in repeating the same old arguments again and again, hence have abbreviated my response.

The fact that you are not in control-of-your-control does not mean
that someone else is. It just means the process of control is a "at a least partial" "more or less"
thing.

Wrong. Your "control" must follow some algorithm. Either you created the algorithm (ie you are in control of your control), or the algorithm was somehow created "for you", outside of your control (ie it was either created by someone else, by something else, or has simply an indeterministic cause).

Or some mixture of the above.

If the algorithm for your control was somehow created "for you" outside of your control then how can you possibly claim to have ultimate control?

Even a compatiblist can claim that a human has a level of control and reponsibility
that a rock does not have, despite being ultimately
determined by outside circumstances. It is not the level that a libertarian would
want, but it is not zero.

The only way you can claim ultimate control over your actions is if indeed you have control over your control over your control ad infinituum. It's exactly the same problem as with UR.

I didn't claim "ultimate" control. You need to refute (semi)compatibilism.

But it would be a very fancy theromometer. AI researchers
have been chasing human-style rationallity for decades.
A simple machine which behaves rationally yet not completely predictably would in fact be very easy to construct.

Hmmm. You and I must understand very different things by "rationally" then.

That machine could operate in the same way as your RIG/SIS. But nobody (apart perhaps from yourself) would claim that such a simple machine possesed UR.

If it did no possesses HUMAN style ratioanlity, we would not attribute
human style responsibility to it. We do not attribute human-style reponsibility to
animals or children. The problems is not that SIS+RIG is the wrong criterion
for reponsibility, the problem is that you have set the bar too low
on the level of rationality.

How can I be held responsible for something which is indeterministic hence not under my control?

It is under your control because you do not have to act on it: that is
what the SIS is for.

To be repsonsible is not the same as being causally responsible.

Direct causal responsibility is not required, I agree, but there must be at least some unbroken indirect chain of cause and effect over which I have control, otherwise I cannot possibly be reasonably held responsible.

You don't need an "unbroken" chain, just an originative ability combined with a level
of absence of caprice.

How can I be responsible for some X unless I have at least some causal influence over whether X occurs or not?

If you don't have originative (libertarian) responsibility, you have intentional
(comaptibilist) reponsibility, and if you don't have that, you have
causal responsibility, because everything does.

Perhaps you could give an example where an agent can reasonably be held responsible for an event X when there is absolutely no possibility of a causal relationship between the agent and the causally antecedent states of event X?

And what is this event X? You have started off thinking about indeterministic events inside you, and drifted in
talking about actions outside you.

Responsibility is a relationsip that holds or fails to
hold between an agent and an action performed externally. You are not responsible
for things like earthquakes: the relationsip fails to hold. You are also
not reponsible for neural firings as such; in this case is is
a category error to say that you are responsible or not for
your neural firings. A different relationship holds: you are
*constituted* by them. So, no, you cannot be held reponsible
for what your RIG does. But you *are* reponsbile for actions
you perform (whether or not your RIG is involved). And there
*is* always a causal relationship between you and your actions
(although things like intentionality may be optional).

Lots of words, but you still have not addressed the fundamental problem : You have not shown how UR can “switch on” within an agent if UR is totally absent at some point in the agent’s antecedent states. The RIG/SIS certainly does not create UR. Your claim to UR is therefore based on unsubstantiated belief – ie faith – and not reason.

Unlike your claim of GoL qualia...Since SFA's are the essence of an individual's free will, they must also be the essence of an individual's responsibility. Yet they are indeterministic -- mere caprice! This is a very important objection which gets to the heart of what people dislike about indeterminism-based free will. Bear in mind that we have accepted Dennett's point about the distributed mind. It is the agent as a whole who is responsible, not the any particular part of the agent, including any "indeterminism" module the agent might possess. The agents actions are not caused by any particular neuron, or any particular subsystem, but by the central nervous system acting in concert. An "indeterminism" module would therefore not cause actions, simpliciter, any more than any other module.

Moreover, in our model we posit another module in addition to the indeterminism module (or Random Idea Generator) whose function is specifically to "filter" the output of the Random Idea Generator. Thus the objection that you cannot control which signal the indeterminism module is going to generate is vitiated by placing the control after the generation of the signal. (Just as Natural Selection rescues Darwinian evolution from being mere caprice by acting on genes after they have mutated). There is no straightforward inference from a lack of causal responsibility for one's indeterminism generator to a lack of moral responsibility an agent

Finally, recall that in our discussion of semicompatibilism and responsibility we agreed that there are forms of moral responsibility which are compatible with determinism. Thus, responsibility does not kick in when and only when the R.I.G or indeterminism module fires; responsibility is not created ex nihilo.

1. Libertarian responsibility does not arise out of nothing, it arises out of semicompatibilist responsibility.

Semicompatibilist responsibility does not entail UR, but libertarian responsibility does entail UR. You have not shown how we can go from “no UR” to “UR” (you simply claim, or assume, that it can somehow come about, presumably via some supernatural mechanism?)

You are being absolutist again. libertarian responsibility is compatibilist
reponsibility + origination. Adding origination doesn't substract the
aspects of repsonsibility compatible with determinism, thanks to the S.I.S.

2. There is no requirement that every intentional state is brought about 100% intentionally by the preceding state.
But there IS a requirement that I must be at least partially UR for each intentional state in the string of states – UR cannot “switch on” if UR is totally absent in antecedent states.

But the only time in your life when you are lacking in intentionality is in infancy,
when you are not a fully-formed person anyway. There is no point where
you are a fully-formed person , yet lacking responsibly. Personhood,
agenthood, intnetionality, responsibility all develop together.

Note, by the way, that this is all framed in terms of intentionality , and
intentionality is compatible with determinism. The regress "problem" is nothing
essentially to do with indeterminism or libertarianism. You can find
infinite regresses anywhere, providing you look at things in a sufficiently
absolutist way. That is what the Prime Mammal argument illustrates.

 

[Tournesol]

So, projecting backwards:-
N is 90% intentionally brought about by N-1
N is 81% intentionally brought about by N-2
N is 73% intentionally brought about by N-3
N is 59% intentionally brought about by N-4
N is 47% intentionally brought about by N-5
N is 43% intentionally brought about by N-6
N is 33% intentionally brought about by N-7
N is 31% intentionally brought about by N-8
N is 28% intentionally brought about by N-9
N is 25% intentionally brought about by N-10
N is 23% intentionally brought about by N-11
N is 20% intentionally brought about by N-12
N is 18% intentionally brought about by N-13
N is 17% intentionally brought about by N-14
N is 14% intentionally brought about by N-15
N is 12% intentionally brought about by N-16
N is 10% intentionally brought about by N-17

etc etc.

It tapers off

If I am only 10% responsible for state N-17,

You at time T-17 are 10% reponsible for your state at time
T.

and state N-17 is the single causal antecedent of state N-16,

N17 is the deteministic antecedent of n-16. The rest of the
causality is indetermiistic.

 

[Tournesol]

To be UR or Not to be UR, that is the question
In the below explanation, we refer to the attached figures.

Each state (of the agent) is either causally related to one or more antecedent states (such as states N, N-2, N-5, N-9 in figure 1 attached), or it has no causal relationship whatsoever with any antecedent states (such as state N-14 in figure 1 attached).

If there is no causally antecedent state for any given state X, the agent cannot be held ultimately responsible (UR) for that particular state X.

If every state is the result of the SIS and RIG working together, there is always
a casually antecedent component.

Referring to figure 2, here the RIG provides an indeterministic input (ie the RIG has no causally antecedent states) to the SIS. The RIG cannot therefore be a source of UR. The only way that UR can arise in the RIG/SIS combination is therefore if the agent possesses UR for the SIS; but this would entail a never-ending string of UR for each of the causally antecedent states of the SIS. Again, we are forced into infinite regress.

And the same reasoning would apply without any RIG at all. So this has nothing
to do with indeterminism or libertarianism. There are reasons for thinking that
agents are not responsible for actions brought about
by intentional states that have no relationship *at all*
to previous states, but it overstates that requirement
to require infinite chains of inetentional states -- indeed
thit is just the dichotomy -- the false dichotomy -- that
the Prime Mammal story is supposed ot illustrate. And it has
nothing
to do with indeterminism or libertarianism. If the dichotomy
is valid, it no-one is ever repsonisble for anything , even
if libertariansim is completely false and determinism completely
true.Or we could just realize the only time in your life when you are lacking in intentionality is in infancy,
when you are not a fully-formed person anyway. There is no point where
you are a fully-formed person , yet lacking responsibly. Personhood,
agenthood, intnetionality, responsibility all develop together.

 

[metacristi]

I am told that the construction 'strict determinism' (used in my previous post above) is usually associated with superdeterminism, strong determinism, so that I should keep its original sense. I think I need to give some explanations here. Yes I know that philosophical determinism implies the absence of events without causes but I'd argue that we can still talk of determinism [be it only in a weaker sense - quasi determinism] even in cases when there exist few uncaused events having a very small impact on reality (and playing no role in human consciousness). This is why I used, mainly, the construction 'strict determinism' for the case when all effects have causes. But I think the objection is pertinent after all so in order to avoid all misunderstandings I have to do the appropriate corrections. Since I can no more edit the original post I will do this here:

Originally Posted by Dooga Blackrazor
Is quantum mechanics deterministic? It argues that probabilistic events occur, does it not? However, if these events occur, couldn't one say that the result of a probabilistic event was not caused? If it was caused, it would be determined and not probabilistic, would it not? Given this assumption, does quantum mechanics believe in randomness? If randomness is the absence of causation, how can one argue logically that something can happen without giving a causation?

Thanks,

Very Confused

I don't think we can argue [from existing evidence] against some sort of causation and the existence of clear laws at quantum level. As Paul C. W. Davies argues well the atomic level is not completely anarchic many reactions and transformations, perfectly possible at the conceptual level otherwise, never happen there (no one has ever seen for example protons transforming into positrons or electrons into neutrinos) there are some clear laws then.

Further the claim that no better description of the state vector exist because there are no hidden variables is too strong, at most we can argue that some quantum events are without cause (this without rejecting hidden variables or the possibility of exact laws at quantum level - no matter whether we are able to find them or not).

Karl Popper argues exactly in this direction, without claiming however that he solved the problem (determinism, all events have causes, is basically non falsifiable indeed). In his view there are some uncaused events (important for conscious experience, accounting for the spontaneity of human thought) but this does not mean for example that we have to reject the possible existence of clear laws ‘governing’ the two slit experiment (even if these laws will remain forever God’s secret to use a cliche used by some Copenhagenists). In other words we can defend [from what we know today] at most a weak form of indeterminism (some events at quantum level are uncaused) but we cannot ignore causality and the possible existence of strict laws at quantum level.

[To be more exact Popper denies the total and exact determination of future events by present events or by the future of those future events; in this view we can even avoid saying that there are really uncaused events, all that is required for indeterminism is the existence of some events, no matter how small, without a strict predetermination. But, in my view, I don't think we can really avoid talking of uncaused events as much as some characteristics of the effect(s) do not depend by the cause(s) - see below].

Finally given that we deal with a genuine underdetermination in the case of the interpretation of the mathematical formalism of QM we cannot exclude from the equation determinism (all effects have causes). The so called hidden variables interpretations of QM (Bohm’s version for example is deterministic) are far from being falsified (in spite of some dogmatics) and determinism is still with us be it linked with contextualism. The determinism vs indeterminism debate still rage (determinism is fully compatible even with Bell's theorem and Aspect's experiment) maybe time will settle things.

PS: By the way probabilistic descriptions are compatible with both determinism (it is different from the capacity of making accurate, non probabilistic, predictions) and indeterminism (at least one event in the universe is uncaused).

PPS: The construction ‘determinism' (meaning that all effects have causes) encompasses both 'strong determinism' (all events have necessary and sufficient causes; if we could somehow 'run' the Universe from the beginning exactly the same things would happen) and Mill's 'weak determinism' (events are caused but things could have been otherwise). But personally I don't see how 'things could have been otherwise' without resorting to events without causes [I don't think we can really avoid talking of uncaused events as much as some characteristics of the effect do not depend by the cause(s)]. For example we can say that weak and strong interactions are responsible to some extent for radioactivity but they do not account for the exact moment of decay in the case of individual atoms, the weak + strong interactions do not appear to be responsible for this – if this is really so ontologically then we still deal with uncaused events (the movement of intra-nuclear particles is random and uncaused, not obeying some strict quantum laws).

 

[Royce]

It is not that any event does not have a cause, but as in radioactive decay, there does not appear to be any cause that determines when it will occur. It is, so far as we can tell, a caused event that occurs randomly, at random times.

If random events occur or a caused event occurs randomly, then hard determinism is refuted, because such occurrences cannot be precisely determined and thus an unknown and unknowable state exists. The cause and effect determination chain is broken.
It cannot be said that state N-1 necessarily follows state N-0.