Free Will: The Confusion with Determinism

It seems to me Rosenberg, following Whitehead, explains this. Same with Weiss, though in a different way.

For Rosenberg physics under explains causality which is where consciousness steps in. Rosenberg also links consciousness to time in what I believe follows Whitehead's understanding. I get into this below replying to Max.

For Weiss the under-explanation has to do with the fact that efficient causation under explains causality which is why you need final/formal/material causation - Final Causation being purpose/teleology.

Really once you have Aristotle's four causes & Whitehead I think it becomes clearer how something like free will or quantum "randomness" (an obvious under-explanation IMO) could arise.

It admittedly surprised me to realize how confused & lacking the determinist/random dichotomy was.
I'm fine with physics underexplaining causality, but how does consciousness help without itself being deterministic and/or random?

People often say that the determinism/randomness dichotomy is confused, but I never get a third alternative that doesn't simply push down the problem. What is this final causation that's supposed to help?

~~ Paul
 
Well, physical history must play some role or my decisions wouldn't have anything to do with the real world. But are you saying that my decisions are deterministic? How does that help the libertarian?

~~ Paul

There is reciprocal causation in a sense. Physical factors influence, but not cause in the sense that the physical causation exhausts the explanation of the choice.
 
I'm fine with physics underexplaining causality, but how does consciousness help without itself being deterministic and/or random?

People often say that the determinism/randomness dichotomy is confused, but I never get a third alternative that doesn't simply push down the problem. What is this final causation that's supposed to help?

~~ Paul

Well you have to go back to Aristotle's notions of act & potency, and see why the application of four causes make sense with final causation being the inner aim of particular units. I don't think I can adequately describe a fundamental revision of metaphysics in a forum post. :-)

A partial answer, however, can be provided to get you started on this incredible intellectual journey ->

Why do you think things have to be either deterministic or random? This is just some philosophical position with assumptions built in, not an empirical observation given we don't have a scientific model that can answer Hume's critique of causality.

I think once we dismantle the idea that the deterministic/random dichotomy can fully explain reality we see the need for something like final causation to explain events even outside the level of human interaction.

For randomness I don't even understand how something can happen for no reason at all.

The other horn, determinism, fails to make sense when you try to actually put it into practice since laws of nature can't work without running into the interaction problem. So if laws aren't being imposed from the outside, as Talbott notes in Do Physical Laws Make Things Happen? they have to coordinate the fundamental units of reality from the inside:

The conviction that laws somehow give us a full accounting of events seems often to be based on the idea that they govern the world's substance or matter from outside, "making" things happen. If this is the case, however, then we must provide some way for matter to recognize and then obey these external laws. But, plainly, whatever supports this capacity for recognition and obedience cannot itself be the mere obedience. Anything capable of obeying wholly external laws is not only its obedience but also its capability, and this capability remains unexplained by the laws.

If, with so many scientists today, we construe laws as rules, we can put the matter this way: much more than rule-following is required of anything able to follow rules; conversely, no set of rules can by themselves explain the presence or functioning of that which is capable of following them.

It is, in other words, impossible to imagine matter that does not have some character of its own. To begin with, it must exist. But if it exists, it must do so in some particular manner, according to its own way of being. Even if we were to say, absurdly, that its only character is to obey external laws, this "law of obedience" itself could not be just another one of the external laws being obeyed. Something will be "going on" that could not be understood as obedience to law, and this something would be an essential expression of what matter was. To apprehend the world we would need to understand this expressive character in its own right, and we could never gain such an understanding solely through a consideration of external laws.

So we can hardly find coherence in the rather dualistic notion that physical laws reside, ghost-like, in some detached, abstract realm from which they impinge upon matter. But if, contrary to our initial assumption, we take laws to be in one way or another bound up with the world's substance — if we take them to be at least in part an expression of this substance — then the difficulty in the conventional view of law becomes even more intense. Surely it makes no sense to say that the world's material phenomena are the result — the wholly explained result — of matter obeying laws which it is itself busy expressing. In whatever manner we prefer to understand the material expression of the laws, this expression cannot be a matter of obedience to the laws being expressed! If whatever is there as the substance of the world at least in part determines the laws, then the laws cannot be said to determine what is there.

So how to explain the regularity of the world from the inside, where these units - whether virtual particles or quantum foam or whatever - manage to pull off enough regularity where one would erroneously try to extrapolate this regularity to external laws imposing themselves in a dualist fashion?

Since laws are just a representation of the failure to explain why things happen one way rather than another there has to be some teleological principle directing the harmony through which we find these regularities in the physical world. If experience is the carrier of causality, as Gregg Rosenberg suggests, then the regularities would be explained by thinking of fundamental units as communicating their aims.

As Weiss notes, this is how to understand final causality under a process metaphysics:

Final cause, as we have seen, is thoroughly rehabilitated in process metaphysics. Nothing happens without a “reason why.” Every concrescence begins with a settled past and with an aim at value. In transphysical process metaphysics, the importance of final causes is greater than it is in Whiteheadian process metaphysics. In in transphysical process metaphysics, the aim of one occasion is understood as having a direct influence on the aims of certain other occasions that take place in spatial and temporal contiguity to it.

This understanding of final causes has significant ramifications. If we understand final cause in this way, it allows us to account for the fact—attested to over and over again in daily life and well established in parapsychological experiments—that our aim, our purpose, or our will has noticeable effects in the world around us. Centuries of scientific materialism have accustomed us to the idea that all interactions among entities are external, like a kinetic interaction between billiard balls.

Transphysical process metaphysics while it acknowledges the existence of efficient causes, revisions them as a transmission of experience through the creative advance. But transpersonal process metaphysics also allows the purpose, or aim, of a given occasion to have an effect on other occasions under certain circumstances. This is a kind of transmission of final causes.
 
There is reciprocal causation in a sense. Physical factors influence, but not cause in the sense that the physical causation exhausts the explanation of the choice.
Yes, this is fine. What I don't see is how the additional sources of causation suddenly help to make the decision free.

~~ Paul
 
I have no idea. But so what if it is completely arbitrary?

Well it could be it's own thing, a fundamental kind of mental causation (something McGinn's suggested in the past & Arvan describes as Libertarian Compatibilism), but I think it makes more sense to assume reality is made of free-willed entities (though not necessarily conscious at a human level) rather than stick to the failed randomness/deterministic dichotomy that cannot even explain a basic regularity like the one mentioned here by Haisch:

In his book QED Feynman discusses the situation of photons being partially transmitted and partially reflected by a sheet of glass: reflection amounting to four percent. In other words one out of every 25 photons will be reflected on average, and this holds true even for a "one at a time" flux. The four percent cannot be explained by statistical differences of the photons (they are identical) nor by random variations in the glass. Something is "telling" every 25th photon on average that it should be reflected back instead of being transmitted. Other quantum experiments lead to similar paradoxes.
 
A partial answer, however, can be provided to get you started on this incredible intellectual journey ->

Why do you think things have to be either deterministic or random? This is just some philosophical position with assumptions built in, not an empirical observation given we don't have a scientific model that can answer Hume's critique of causality.
It seems to me to be a logical position, not a philosophical one. Random = not determined. An event is either determined by prior events, or it is not-determined and so arbitrary. Or possibly some combination. I see no logical room for anything else.

I think once we dismantle the idea that the deterministic/random dichotomy can fully explain reality we see the need for something like final causation to explain events even outside the level of human interaction.
But I haven't seen the idea dismantled yet. Is there some event I can witness that clearly requires an explanation beyond determinism and randomness?

For randomness I don't even understand how something can happen for no reason at all.
It just happens. But I agree that it's tough to think about. Perhaps there are underlying reasons for everything, including which particle decays next. But if there are, I don't see how those reasons can be anything but deterministic.

The other horn, determinism, fails to make sense when you try to actually put it into practice since laws of nature can't work without running into the interaction problem. So if laws aren't being imposed from the outside, as Talbott notes in Do Physical Laws Make Things Happen? they have to coordinate the fundamental units of reality from the inside:

So how to explain the regularity of the world from the inside, where these units - whether virtual particles or quantum foam or whatever - manage to pull off enough regularity where one would erroneously try to extrapolate this regularity to external laws imposing themselves in a dualist fashion?
I have no idea how to explain the regularity. I agree that the idea of separate, external laws driving the world is probably wrong.

Since laws are just a representation of the failure to explain why things happen one way rather than another there has to be some teleological principle directing the harmony through which we find these regularities in the physical world. If experience is the carrier of causality, as Gregg Rosenberg suggests, then the regularities would be explained by thinking of fundamental units as communicating their aims.

As Weiss notes, this is how to understand final causality under a process metaphysics:
I don't see how pushing some kind of teleological capability into fundamental existente eliminates the problem of determinism. Even if that photon is making complex decisions about how to interact with other particles, we still have to ask how it decided.

~~ Paul
 
Well it could be it's own thing, a fundamental kind of mental causation (something McGinn's suggested in the past & Arvan describes as Libertarian Compatibilism), but I think it makes more sense to assume reality is made of free-willed entities (though not necessarily conscious at a human level) rather than stick to the failed randomness/deterministic dichotomy that cannot even explain a basic regularity like the one mentioned here by Haisch:
And yet how would it be explained by free-willed photons?

~~ Paul
 
Yes, this is fine. What I don't see is how the additional sources of causation suddenly help to make the decision free.

~~ Paul

Sounds like you have a definition of free that is causing problems.

If I, the conscious agent Neil, can make a choice, and that choice is not determined entirely by the physical factors, but can be made or influenced by my own conscious thoughts and effort, how is that not free?

Someone says there is no free will because the physical entirely determines the choice. If that is not the case, there is some freedom.
 
And yet how would it be explained by free-willed photons?

~~ Paul

Whenever we observe A -> B, we can always ask, "Why not A -> C the next time around"? In this case it's the movement of electrons.

Something has to explain why something happens one way rather than another, and as noted above it has to be something internal to the fundamental units rather than external laws. The summation of priors A = {a1, a2, ...., aN} is insufficient to explain B, because you can always ask "Why not C"? As per Hume's critique -> Why can't things happen another way this time around?

Randomness isn't an explanation, merely the admission of ignorance.

Having experience be the carrier of causality, as Gregg Rosenberg suggests, is what allows the transmission of final causes that Weiss notes above.
 
Randomness isn't an explanation, merely the admission of ignorance.

Lol... finally... it's probably a label for summat we don't understand.. the randomness probably isn't ever really random.

I see people chucking these big labels around you know, and I'm sure there is summat trap-like in using them, whereby you can become ensnared within your own thinking.

I was just talking with a friend about (why I'm no good at it) and saying that people fill up these suitcases with meanings I'm sure as a convenient short cut, slap a label on em, then proceed to argue by moving the suitcases around... because it's easier, which of course, I find meaningless... because I only want to argue about what's inside the suitcases.

I'm sure there is a trap to thinking like that... although I admit, it's a lot less effort when everybody's suitcase contents is the same (rare?).
 
It seems to me Rosenberg, following Whitehead, explains this. Same with Weiss, though in a different way.

For Rosenberg physics under explains causality which is where consciousness steps in. Rosenberg also links consciousness to time in what I believe follows Whitehead's understanding. I get into this below replying to Max.

For Weiss the under-explanation has to do with the fact that efficient causation under explains causality which is why you need final/formal/material causation - Final Causation being purpose/teleology.

Really once you have Aristotle's four causes & Whitehead I think it becomes clearer how something like free will or quantum "randomness" (an obvious under-explanation IMO) could arise.

It admittedly surprised me to realize how confused & lacking the determinist/random dichotomy was. :)





This reminds me very much of Whitehead. Quoting Sheldrake's explanation:



I realize there are differences from your account but I hope there's some value in the quote....otherwise it means I've completely failed to comprehend your ideas. :)

Will reply to second section of your post in a bit, want to go back and read some of your earlier stuff I've bookmarked to improve the quality of my reply.

I would have to look at Whiteheads ideas in detail to know, but I only know of him because of Sheldrake. There does appear to be some similarities from the quote that you posted, but I can also see things in there which concern me too.

Because of my ideas, I'm leary to expose myself to other people's ideas (patterns), unless I'm searching for summat very specific. My belief is that they can fuck up ones own creative thought processes. My own ideas are still pretty fragile, and I don't want to subject them to other people's ideas. I'm OK with observations though, if they are clear and relevant.

My suspicion is that I will learn exactly what I need to know by following my own motivations. I pose simple problems and refuse to solve them, Sleeping on them, sometimes for many weeks, often waking up in the middle of the night with a clear solution, or at least a new route to explore.
 
Lol... finally... it's probably a label for summat we don't understand.. the randomness probably isn't ever really random.

Well to me "random" is synonymous with "arbitrary". The problem with something being "arbitrary" is IMO it's like the saying about feces & wine -> Whether you have a barrel of feces with a spoonful or wine or a barrel of wine with a spoonful of feces what you're left with is a barrel of feces.

If you allow a little arbitrariness, even at the point of the Big Bang, you end up with a nonsensical reality because you have a failure of one piece of the puzzle to stand in relation to all the relations you've posited. Yet a deterministic reality - meaning a reality wherein only efficient causality exists - always has to have some brute facts that are arbitrary even it comes down to a few constants.

To give answer to Hume's critique (Why not A -> C this time, even if A -> B has held X times before?) we need to rethink causality. And we might as well, since as previously noted we don't have any working model of causality anyway and it seems to attenuate if not vanish at the lowest levels.

Ideally if some necessary priors to consciousness involve quantum biology we might see some advances on this front, as no one is going to buy that everything in human history was due to "random" movements of particles.

Beyond my previous critique of efficient causality being sufficient to explain events I think there's also the issue that a chain of efficient causes assumes time is some external force imposing itself on reality. I suspect the saying "Things are not in Time, Time is in Things" is truer to what's actually happening....but that's admittedly just an intuitive guess at the moment.
 
Sounds like you have a definition of free that is causing problems.

If I, the conscious agent Neil, can make a choice, and that choice is not determined entirely by the physical factors, but can be made or influenced by my own conscious thoughts and effort, how is that not free?
Because your conscious thoughts and effort are just deterministic and random like anything else. So you still don't have libertarian free will.

Someone says there is no free will because the physical entirely determines the choice. If that is not the case, there is some freedom.
I don't see how. Something other than the physical may determine the choice, but I see no way for that immaterial causality to be free.

~~ Paul
 
Whenever we observe A -> B, we can always ask, "Why not A -> C the next time around"? In this case it's the movement of electrons.

Something has to explain why something happens one way rather than another, and as noted above it has to be something internal to the fundamental units rather than external laws. The summation of priors A = {a1, a2, ...., aN} is insufficient to explain B, because you can always ask "Why not C"? As per Hume's critique -> Why can't things happen another way this time around?
I'm not sure why asking the question carries any weight. Given the exact same priors, perhaps things will always happen exactly the same way. I must be missing something.

Randomness isn't an explanation, merely the admission of ignorance.
Unless, in fact, there are truly random events.

~~ Paul
 
Because your conscious thoughts and effort are just deterministic and random like anything else. So you still don't have libertarian free will.


I don't see how. Something other than the physical may determine the choice, but I see no way for that immaterial causality to be free.

~~ Paul

The thoughts are not reducible to the physical, so they are not deterministic, nor are they random.
 
I'm not sure why asking the question carries any weight. Given the exact same priors, perhaps things will always happen exactly the same way. I must be missing something.

As Hume notes all you have with your account of causality is a list of events at time T1 and some other event at time T2.

But then, under the loose definition of causality consisting only of priors, substance dualism can work - you have some decision made by the soul at time T1 and some event based on that decision at time T2.

Unless, in fact, there are truly random events.

If there are truly random events, then there's little point in claiming the world makes sense. There's just an arbitrary reality. Why couldn't substance dualism work in this reality? Or really any arbitrary kind of causation?
 
Back
Top