Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not sure whether to be surprised by your commitment to hard determinism in light of your not having thought through the issues associated with emergence before.

This is the kind of thing I had in mind, and what keeps me from being a confirmed hard determinist.

While amplified randomness is still randomness, at least there is room for the possibility of something more.

Consider any ordinary usage of the words 'free will'. You will see that my analysis unpacks the meaning quite correctly.

If you wish to discuss something else (a concept not indicated in the ordinary usage of 'free will'), by all means do so. But please first clarify what this other concept might be.

Why don't people like the idea of free will? What's the big deal? I don't understand this strong opposition to it.

It's because of religion, isn't it? The idea is elemental in religion. Dime to a dollar that if most religions didn't have this idea, most would welcome the notion.

Also, note that our 'free will' heuristics do occasionally misfire; and sometimes our behavior in stable environments on slow time scales surprises us. (We predict incorrectly.) But in these cases we feel that our 'free will' has been bypassed or violated---not vindicated!

Um...the concept is elemental in ordinary life, and it's not difficult to analyze it more or less adequately. (As I did a few posts above.) The "philosophers" ITT merely see questions where there are none.

No, it's usually because people put so much faith in our evidence for all processes being deterministic, the mind = brain, therefore mind is determined too.

Your post does not unpack the commonsense use of 'free will' at all. The commonsense meaning is "could have done otherwise" but many good papers (most notably Frankfurt's) have attempted to demonstrate that "could have done otherwise" is not sufficient for free will. I have been quite clear ITT what is meant by free will...I suspect that you have grunched hardcore.

I'm not sure that you really know the meaning of how you're using "heuristic" here. Why is free will, the phenomenological experience of willing and intent and agency, merely a heuristic evolved to predict behavior? This would require an amazing just-so-story...I'd like to hear it. It would be a nice case of creative writing. Attributing free will to people is a horrible heuristic for predicting behavior! Game theory does a much better job where we assume, basically, that agents are unthinking in a sense. Agents are modeled as basically utility maximizing automatons. Attributing free will to predict behavior would be a terrible method. You have not thought through your post.

That was my intent.

That was why I described consciousness, the mind, intent, and purpose as physicalistically emergent.


I included quantum effects to insure indeterminancy. But the quantum effects are not simply summed. They are transformed by the physicallistic emergent properies of intent and purpose to produce Top-Down indeterminate but non random uncaused causes. However it might be the quantum effects aren't really needed. High level indeterminancy might just be an emergent property of the system as well. We were suprised to discover indeterminancy at the quantum level. We might be suprised again to discover it emerging at higher levels. Just because it was random at the quantum level does not mean it will be random everywhere we discover it.


PairTheBoard

No, we see nuance where you do not. Our standards of precision are much higher. We rigorously analyze concepts and out pops nuance which requires resolution. These are the "problems" that you claim don't exist...but they do, when you submit a thesis to rigorous analysis.

Again, I'm very sympathetic...but the problem is that this is merely a lot of "maybe this" and "maybe that" with a lot of handwaving in between. Again...I'm sympathetic! But, I prefer to do the other legwork available since what you're talking about is "merely an empirical question" However, once again, we must understand that any such empirical finding would not establish the metaphysical case in either direction.

Oh it's cool, I guess I just never really thought about in terms of this problem. I don't think it really applies here. Emergence is just the human desire to put patterns into place where there really are none with any real meaning. So yes, human behavioral patterns exist, swarms of bees form giant arrows right before stinging cartoon characters, and ideas like intent are used to describe human object interaction. Out of this arise useful patterns in our survival, but none with any real meaning, none that give us magical powers of choice that none of the other billions of species, objects, or molecules have. Without the reducible parts none of these larger scale phenomena could exist, so somewhere in some statistical representation, these phenomena are captured and explained albeit incredibly complex.

You're telling us the following post analyzes free will in its entirety...? (Plz say yes.)

No, sir, that's not what free will means. It's not an evolved trial-and-error method that can be in shown in some lab, and it most certainly is not predictable. It's not restrained by causality.

These behaviors in the category of "could have done otherwise"...what do they look like? Doubtless, they occur in stable environments and on slow time scales. Furthermore, they are surely behaviors that we have an instinctive feel for what they should be...

You've made vague references to some private (and apparently empty) concept that you have; but certainly not clarified anything I can see.

I'm using it as a generic label for all the machinery (either instinctive or learned) that sets our subconscious expectations vis-a-vis our behavior.

Our brains are constantly predicting that the next thing to make into consciousness should look just so. These expectations, as they apply to our own behavior, are what we refer to by 'free will.'

See above; you've misread what I mean by 'heuristic.'

Lol. Let me know when you have something to say that has even the slightest observation connection to reality.

You've misused 'heuristic' then and have no idea what it means either computationally or psychologically. Your use can't even distinguish a heuristic from an algorithm or even just a determinate unconscious pathway.

But, either way, it's not a meaningful use in defining free will. I agree with Hardball's analysis of your definition...it's just flat wrong and out to lunch. However, where I'll differ from Hardball is that I'd allow free will to be constrained by causality (even influenced) but just not determined.

Sub, I've been very very clear what free will amounts to such that it should satisfy what you're bitching about. You've clearly grunched this thread and not read even my recent long posts on what a libertarian means by free will. The fact that it's one of today's posts is impressive...that you haven't read it.

Again, I'm talking about what we actually mean by 'free will'. (Viz.---what experiences create the actual meaning of the concept 'free will'.) If you wish to discuss something else, feel free to clarify what that might be.

"It's not restrained by causality" doesn't even mean anything; hence it clarifies nothing.

What does this even mean? I mean, it appears to be English...but the meaning is certainly not clear.

What is an "observation connection to reality"?

Furthermore, why has what I said not satisfied whatever the hell you mean by this?

sweet, more one liners!

And we've demonstrated that what YOU mean is not what anyone means by free will. The average person won't mean what you say; psychologists won't mean that; philosophers working on this problem don't mean that. WHO means what you mean when they use free will?

We HAVE been clear by what we mean...read the damned thread.

Hell, read this post: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=208

Because you probably have terrible reading comprehension, here's the FIRST line from that post:

"Libertarian free will only requires that there exists at least one instance of a choice or act which is not able to be determined by perfect knowledge of initial conditions and laws of nature and that it isn't merely "random.""

This is the basic libertarian definition of free will.

WTF do algorithms have to do with this? Yes, we need a few more decades before we can be neurologically explicit about predictive mechanisms. So I'll just call them 'heuristics' until then.

It's an analysis of what the words 'free will' actually mean.

Um...I don't care what you would allow?

Um...I don't care what "libertarians" mean by 'free will'?

My thoughts were intended to support plausibility.


What "other legwork" do you have in mind?


PairTheBoard

Making observations of game-theoretic predictable behavior in paradigm cases of "free choice" coherent for libertarians.

Sorry, "observable connection to reality."

And you'd be wrong...because you don't understand the distinction that is already present in use.


Yeah, a very poor one which no one agrees with you on (I mean in the field of inquiry...but even no one here seems likely to agree either).


You should since it goes to demonstrate what I mean by free will. You asked what I meant, and yet you don't care for part of the answer? You're worse than a table, sir.



Again, you should for the previous reason. Why bother attempting to engage in debate w/ me if you don't care what others think/mean?