Glad you brought this up because I was wondering if the Many Worlds scenario can be possible in a Deterministic universe. Surely if events are simply unfolding, rather than developing (and randomly spawning universes where there exist alternative outcomes) then there can only be one universe, with one path, or are those many worlds simply Determined too despite their apparent randomness? Can anything be random in Determinism?

No, if we are talking about Determinism as a philosophical view. Our best science suggests that the universe is not deterministic all the way down. Obviously this gets a lot of resistance, but I think this is consequence of turning useful models into philosophies. Clearly little-d determinism is a model with an extremely wide domain of applicability (we can safely assume that quantum indeterminism isn't going to make our macroscopic probes crash into Mars), even if quantum events are indeterministic. But once you commit to the idea that a successful model must be universally applicable you run the serious risk of being embarrassed in the future cf. behaviourism in psychology, theoretical reductionism in philosophy of science etc etc.

Here's the thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/13...74/index2.html

The conversation starts at post #89, but see specifically #96, #105, #111, #120, and #128 (and also #142). The example of #133 forward is Zumby's inability to accept a third category of behavior.

The model is simply that the will acts. It's not determined by/caused by the present conditions (though it certainly can be influenced by it) and it's not random (in the sense of not being controlled and arbitrary). It's simply an alternate category of behavior which is neither of the above situations.

I'm genuinely curious if you think anyone is going to read e.g. post 138...

... and see it as an "inability to accept a third category of behavior" rather than asking you to clearly express your position. If you honestly believe the former then I need to make a pretty major revision to how I view your posts here.

Anyway, having now gone and re-read the conversation you ended up saying:

Again, the fact that you are so coy about explaining your model e.g. constantly using defensive rhetorical moves like "There's probably no real way for me to describe an immaterial essence in a precise enough manner to satisfy you" leaves me thinking that you aren't really offering a third alternative at all - rather just pushing the question into a black box labelled "the soul". All the interesting questions remain. Just because I do, in fact, see my will as being brain states and you, in fact, do not, doesn't answer the question of whether the will is causally efficacious, or the question of why one person's will is different from another, or if we are morally responsible for our will etc etc. I mean, maybe this isn't what you are saying, but I have no way of knowing because you seem to hate actually stating your position.

I'm only half following this thread, but is this really so bad? Is it possible to start from here and actually explain further to your (or anyone's) satisfaction?

If Aaron says "my model of free will depends on something I can't really explain" then I don't really have a problem with that*. It's the "my model of free will depends on something you won't/can't understand/accept so I'm not even going to bother trying to explain it to you" tactic that I find tedious. Especially given that a) I'm the rare RGT atheist who actually defends free will and b) it's not like presenting a coherent model of libertarian free will is going to give me sleepless nights about theism... there are a huge number of logically possible, coherent models that aren't actually true...

* It would be hypocritical for me to do so, as my model of free will relies on some hand-waving until we have a full neuroscientific explanation of consciousness.

Refusing to explain something and blaming it on his opponent is vintage Aaron

But anyways, I didn't read the entire other thread so maybe I missed something, but I feel that what has been provided is nothing but an assertion. As in, the question is whether there is this third category, and what it might be. Aaron's post reads to me as simply asserting "there exists a third category". That is, when he says the will acts we have to ask what is meant by "acting" and in the elaboration it is claimed that acting is neither determined nor random. In other words the definition of the terms is just such that one gets a third category. So I feel the conversation is this:
zumby: Is there a third category?
Aaron: I assert there is.

zumby, thanks for the response earlier, there's some thoughts I want to get clear before I try to address a couple of the issues raised.

So if my understanding of Carrier is right my moral responsibility derives from choosing to do what I want even though those decisions are caused. I as my body, thoughts beliefs and desires is the ring fenced concept that acquires responsibility. So it appeals to me and I find it easier to grasp than the concept of a metaphysical agency such as a soul but it seems to leave some questions about ultimate responsibility unanswered.

I want to think about this a bit more.

No worries. I'm a little wary of the term "ultimate responsibility" for the same reasons I'm wary of "ultimate meaning" or "ultimate value". I see moral responsibility as something one can have in varying degrees. A good, well-known and common-sense example is the use of a diminished responsibility defence in the law.

I don't think that "ultimate responsibility" exists as such in the naturalist/compatibilist view of free will. In this view I think you could still consider moral responsibility as being either subjective (entirely a social construct) or objective, if it could be shown that basic human ideas about morality result from the way our brains work, or as an outcome of evolutionary processes. But it wouldn't be "absolute" morality in the sense that the word ultimate implies.

Someone can correct me if I'm wrong

W/r/t morality, I used to defend objective morality but I think the term is often confusing as some (a lot?) of people mean "mind-independent" in a strict sense ("the moon exists objectively") rather than the broader sense ("London is objectively the capital of England").

Something Massimo Pigliucci wrote recently resonated strongly with me and replaces those sorts of words with ones that are less weighed down with theological baggage (emphasis mine):

I almost used the word contingent in there

After I posted it I realized I don't really love objective/subjective

One runs into exactly the same issues with the word "random." Whatever you think of by that word is almost certainly an insufficient description unless you define it as not(determined). But even then, all the interesting questions remain.

Instead, the word "random" becomes a placeholder for a concept that we don't actually have a specific definition for, but we all know what we're talking about. And to describe it, we have to use examples and words that may or may not actually communicate any intrinsic properties of the word.

For example:

X: What is random?
Y: It's kind of like flipping a coin. You don't know the outcome.
X: But if you knew enough about the coin, you *could* know the outcome.
Y: Well, yes. But if you don't know, then it's basically random to you.
X: But it's not actually random.
Y: No, not this example. But QM is intrinsically random.
X: What is "intrinsic" randomness?
Y: It's like the coin flip, except that the outcome is actually random. You can't know the outcome, even with all of the information.
X: How do you know there's not a coin flip that's happening that you can't see?
Y: Well, that would be random, right?
X: Random to *YOU*, perhaps. But if you knew enough about *THAT* coin flip, you would know the outcome.
Y: But there's no actual coin flip. It's just random.
X: How do you expect me to understand what random is if you can't describe it?
Y: I just did.
X: No. You described something that was determined. You're just creating a black box labeled "random."
Y: ...

It's like trying to explain the experience of color to a blind person. If you don't have a mental category that will allow you to break the dichotomy of determined/random, I can't really help you. You have to accept as a premise for the conversation that "the will" is something that causes stuff to happen that is independent of the physical state of the universe and is not random.

Sounds legit.

There's only so many times I can say "I'll accept your premise, now just tell me how that works". If you can't explain how it works, just say so. As I've pointed out, I don't have a problem with that. If you can explain how it works, stop being a dafty and explain it.

I was thinking of making the point earlier actually that I am not convinced a meaningful definition of "random" is out there in the context we are talking about. However, I take the stronger view that I don't know if I agree that "but we all know what we are talking about", at least not in this context. It seems a bit egregious to have one ill defined category of "random" and then give a third ill defined category of "will" which has the property of not being determined and not being this other ill defined thing but can't be seemingly described either. It creates a rather tenuous edifice.

I don't think it's impossible to define random, it's just complicated because there are multiple related meanings. The meaning that refers to predictability can depend on context about whether we mean theoretically unpredictable or just practically unpredictable. The other meaning is a description, i.e certain data is random if it has certain statistical properties.

and I think the primary relation between the two meanings is that in practice we some phenomenon appears random in the predictive sense if you can observe many instances of it and they demonstrate the right set of properties

I'm pretty sure I've made it clear that I can't explain how it works. If this is the only hang-up, then somewhere along the way there was a huge disconnect in the conversation.

Ya my "in the context we are talking about" was meant to exclude things like practical unpredictability (ie a dice) or descriptive characterizations of systems which a mathematician or computer scientist and the like might use. And of course, my (often made) claims that I don't see a well defined concept is qualified by "as far as uke_master is aware".

a "many worlds QM" reality is deterministic, but the determinism is at the level of the configuration space of the entire "multiverse" rather than the specific universe we experience. This makes sense given the the way this interpretation came to be. The wave functions in QM are deterministic, it's just that in the normal interpretation there is some point at which it "collapses" and a single outcome occurs out of the distribution represented by the wave function.

The collapse is not deterministic, but the distribution is.

Also you should assume that most of what I just said is terrifyingly wrong in some non-obvious way, since I'm not a physicist, but that's how I understand it.

I suspect the disconnect happened because you have consistently (up until this point) maintained a position that you explaining how your model works would be "like explaining colour to a blind man" or would that my existing worldview would prohibit my understanding etc, which has given an impression that you could explain it, in principle.

You've been reading too many Dennett thought experiments zumby. For most people "like explaining color to a blind man" means they can't explain it

A+ Dennett reference.

However, (and so as not to let Aaron off the hook) the expression only implies that you can't explain colour to a blind man. That is, it is possible for a sighted person to explain a colour to another sighted person ("my carpet is charcoal-grey with a blue tinge") but the blind man is cognitively incapable to make sense of such explanations. The impossibility of explanation is not a fact about colour, per se, it is a fact about the blind man.

Going back to the other thread, in Post #140:

I've got no idea what an "in principle" explanation is. "In principle" I can just say "the will" and you could know precisely what I mean. All explanations must fall into a particular context for it to be understood (or fail to be understood because it's in the wrong context).

I gave a fairly robust analogy to bring about a type of understanding. If you understand the WoW analogy of the other thread, then you can understand "how it works." You may not agree with me that this accurately reflects reality (see my response to neeel in post #105), but that's not the point. I've given you a framework to understand the conversation.

If you don't understand that framework, that's one thing. But since you didn't really ask me questions about that, I assumed you understood. But then asking me "What exactly is an immaterial essence?" or "Explicitly, what is this *ME*?" reads like you've not actually accepted the will as a premise.

Okay

I was actually aiming in the middle. Color can be explained to a blind man only by way of analogy. That is, "orange" itself cannot be explained, but ideas like "a difference in colors" can be explained. Similarly, other aspects of colors can be described without being able to describe the color itself. This is the framework of the WoW analogy of the other thread. I've given you a framework to understand my view. I believe the explanation is clear and sufficiently robust to communicate the idea of the will and how it interacts with an otherwise deterministic universe.