@Hanover @Janus @Rich

Let's look at a relatively simple example of seemingly random behavior and freedom of choice.

Someone asks you to pick a random number between one and a thousand.

You first need knowledge of numbers in order to do so. If you have such knowledge, you then begin the mental process of selecting a 'random' number. But does it end up being truly random? Or is it based on all exposure to numbers (and possibly other experiences) leading up to that choice. Numbers quickly come to mind, and you select from the options presented by your brain, based on the strongest sense of suggestion. Surely this sense is dependent on the way numerical information has been stored in the brain, and how it is accessed.

If we could exactly model how information is stored and accessed in the human brain, we should be able to accurately predict what random number a person would select at any given moment, based on the brain's configuration immediately preceding the question.

You continue to create equivalence between something that may influenceand with something that determines. There are innumerable influences on every decision and it is constantly changing. There is zero evidence that those influences determine a specific action. To make such a declaration is tantamount to turning some belief into some faith in a set of Natural Laws (or God) that is making the decision outside of one's control.

Ultimately, with consideration of all of the influences, the mind had to make the choice out of specific attention to the matter or out of habit. Just ruminate over how you formed your post. You decided on the words to use.

If we could exactly model how information is stored and accessed in the human brain, we should be able to accurately predict what random number a person would select at any given moment, based on the brain's configuration immediately preceding the question. — CasKev

Suppose you created a random number generator that was affected by the position of an electron on the quantum level. It's exact position is indeterminate, so we could not know what random number was going to be selected. When speaking of true randomness (as opposed to simply lacking sufficient information), we are saying that State A will not yield State B in all instances, but it will unpredictably vary.

Regardless, the question of determinism versus indeterminism doesn't address the question of free will. In either event, there are things beyond your control that are affecting an occurrence. If I choose to sit down due to predetermined causes or due to a random event, in neither event do I bear responsibility for it.

If we could exactly model how information is stored and accessed in the human brain, we should be able to accurately predict what random number a person would select at any given moment, based on the brain's configuration immediately preceding the question. — CasKev

There is zero evidence that such a model can be created it that such a model would yield the results you are suggesting. Where is there any evidence that the mind acts in a manner that can be modeled?

There is a huge difference between a computer and the mind that created it. In fact there are quite literally zero similarities.

This is all very interesting and informative but none of it really addresses the question of precisely 'how' an autonomous being can exercise their autonomy in the physical world without being subject to some form of antecedent causation. If they are subject to such causation their actions would appear determined and if they're not then their actions appear random.

It seems evident that quantum theory does away with the old Newtonian form of determinism in which all atomic movements etc are ordained since the birth of the universe (and probably before) but, whilst providing a platform for Alternate Possibilites, this does nothing to address the issue of Ultimate Responsibility.

If X has two potential courses of action open to them at T, X must have some kind of reason for favoring one course over the other or his decision to do one or the other would be random. If X does have a reason to favour one over the other then this must be related to some form of past experience which leads us to an infinite regress and back to a parallel determinism (albeit not of the Newtonian variety).

What is the way out of this?

If X has two potential courses of action open to them at T, X must have some kind of reason for favoring one course over the other or his decision to do one or the other would be random — Mike Adams

Everyone should just read and ruminate over their own posts.

X's mind decides for some reason. It is the mind that is deciding for its own reasons. Who the heck do determinists think is reasoning and choosing? Some angels??

Quantum mechanics definitely challenges Newtonian determinism. But the answer on freewill and causality is more general. What is really needed is an "epistemic cut" between physics and information in a system for it to gain self-regulating autonomy.

That is, a living and mindful system is modelling its relation with the world informationally or symbolically - through a system of interpretive signs.

The disconnect or epistemic cut is clear to see in computation. The hardware takes away the physics essentially. There is still an energetic cost to powering the circuits. But the cost of any operation is made the same. And so physics drops out of the equation as a causal constraint. The software is then left free to symbolise any state of affairs. It is free in an absolute way to be anything it likes. It can invent its own private system of causality, like the logic of a programme that computes.

Now of course computation is just a machine. The epistemic cut is rather too complete. A computer is utterly severed from the world. And so human have to write the programs, build the hardware, act as a connection between the realms of material physics and immaterial information.

But organisms - life and mind in general - have an epistemic cut which is also then the basis of a lived entropic interaction. First, the physics and the information are separated. Organisms have various forms of memory that sit back from the metabolic whirl of dissipative physical action, like genes and neurons. But then this separate realm of information is embedded in an active modelling relation with the physical world. All the information is controlling physical processes, directing them towards desired ends.

So there is a tight feedback loop that spans the physics~information divide that has been constructed. Unlike computation, there is a two-way street where the information may live in its own physics-free environment, but it still has to build its own hardware, pay for its own entropic expenditure. Life doesn't have anyone to plug it into a wall socket. It has to also own the means of self-construction and self-perpetuation.

But when it comes to freewill debates, the essential point is that there is this basic epistemic cut which makes physics not matter. A zone of freedom is created by setting up an informational realm of causality.

Now that freedom is then tied back to the general purpose of being a self-sustaining autonomous or autopoietic system. So it is not the absolute freedom of computation, which has no embedded purpose. But it is the practical freedom that is what it is like to be a human concerned with getting by in the world, making smart choices about physical actions that will perpetuate our existence. It is freewill as the modelling relation that allows us to be plugged into the world we are making for ourselves, individually and collectively.

So really, when it comes to the physics, it makes no difference if that physics is understood as fundamentally deterministic or probabilistic. The epistemic cut upon which life and mind is based already filters that issue out. All that matters is that memory mechanisms can be constructed and material processes thus regulated via a modelling relation.

"X's mind decides for some reason. It is the mind that is deciding for its own reasons."

All that explanation does is raises far more questions. Among them:

- what is 'mind'?
- how does the 'mind' decide?
- once decided, how does this 'mind' instigate the action in the physical world?

Please answer these.

The mind is exactly what everyone experiences as themselves. Close your eyes and ruminate on who you are? You are this this memory and creative force that had the ability to create energy from food and breath and with this energy generate will with the purpose of creating (and learning). Mind is you. It is fundamental. My own idea is that quanta is mind in action. The fluctuating waves of intelligence.

That description is not really of sufficient detail to be a great deal of use. Are you saying it can in now way be reduced to a physical substrate in such a way that would allow us to track any kind of volitional particle manipulation?

Yep, mind it's fundamental. Once that is understood, life makes sense again.

There is a huge difference between a computer and the mind that created it. In fact there are quite literally zero similarities. — Rich

They are both composed of matter.

Yes, one is self-organizing and creating, and the other is dead apart from a small decaying factor. They are moving in different directions.

For those who are having trouble recognizing the differences, a brief experiment of placing a rock next to a plant might be quite elucidating. A gardener easily distinguishes between the two.

No, this is what we would be committed to if we interpreted light as a flow of classical particles. But the Copenhagen interpretation does not do that. — SophistiCat

I agree that is true.

It is committed to the same thing that the fully-quantum theory is committed to, plus a little extra - but that extra does not show up until the measurement occurs at the detectors, at which point the "extra" makes no observable difference. — SophistiCat

There still remains the issue that the probabilities that the Copenhagen interpretation predicts are inexplicable since it rejects causality. They are simply a brute fact about the universe.

It seems an unnecessary bullet to bite, especially when there are live causal alternatives.

I believe Metaphysical Determinism is a mindset that some people have, whether it is mental or physical it is what you believe in. I believe that Determinism is bad and a bad philosophy and that the topiatic mindset is a good one.

I completely agree good sir, Determinism is indeed a good philosophy, maybe if you do not know much about topiatic philosophy you should research about it.

"Yep, mind it's fundamental. Once that is understood, life makes sense again."

I'll ask once again - of what substance is the 'fundamental mind' made of and how (specifically) does it interact with the physical world?

Now let me see. How about quanta? Or maybe mind makes quanta? Take your pick. It's all the same.

And if you want to get nasty, I'll just stop answering your repetitive questions. Mind is fundamental. Got it?

you are not accounting for the fact that nature can create machines, but machines can't create nature.

I certainly didn't mean to sound nasty, and if I did I apologize. What I'm trying to ascertain is how, on your view, the fundamental mind interacts with the physical world? How could mind make quanta?

@Jeff
You are exploiting hanovers interpretation of the word machine, without having defined nature your self, what is nature? My point is that being super stingy about peoples definitions gets us no where in a philisophical conversation. As wittgenstein says words can only refer to othere words.

You are asking how does quanta turn into an electron?

My best guess is that mind creates a vibrational field that it senses. The greater the vibrational frequency, the more "substantial" the field "feels". This is the qualia question. Memory, ideas, emotions, color, sound, will, are least substantial. They create more substantial which we see as more physical.

We understand this conversation from energy to matter, but the exact process I understand as increasing vibrational substantiality.

You claimed there were quite literally zero similarities between minds and computers and here you point out that plants and rocks are distinguishable, as if the two points are related and as if the second point were in dispute. It's all a non sequitur.

Machines are part of nature.

Can you tell the difference between something that is living and something that which is not? If so, count yourself as being a keen observer, because there are lots of people who seen to be unable to distinguish between a computer and a human.

In case I wasn't clear, there is literally zero, zilch, negative infinity similarities between that which is living and that which isn't. One needs water, air, and food and the other doesn't. Anyone here water their computer and breast feed it when it was purchased?

In case I wasn't clear, there is literally zero, zilch, negative infinity similarities between that which is living and that which isn't. — Rich

If there are no similarities between dead things and living things, then if I die, how would you know it was me who died? Probably you'd know by noticing I look really similar to when I was alive.

The total nature of life has changed into dead. The Whole has changed. It is inseparable in its holistic nature. A dead body no longer needs feeding.

If X has two potential courses of action open to them at T, X must have some kind of reason for favoring one course over the other or his decision to do one or the other would be random. If X does have a reason to favour one over the other then this must be related to some form of past experience — Mike Adams

I'm with you on this one. The decision is made based on instinct, and anticipated outcome based on past experience. The instincts and experiences exist prior to the decision, and 'mind' is nothing more than the central processing unit that factors in all the variables, before arriving at the choice it determines will have the best chance of producing the desired outcome.

So if we're right, then, at T, X is not truly free to chose either course of action - leading us back to a form of determinism (albeit of the psychological type rather than the scientific).

Ultimately a persons current action is always in some way going to be 'determined' by the past. I see no way out of this unless we find a way to remove all kinds of prior causation in such a way as to retain Ultimate Responsibility for our actions (i.e. Keep the actions driven by 'us' as opposed to random atomic movement).

Your position that living things share absolutely nothing in common with nonliving things is untenable as is your definition of living things to the extent you say that feeding is a necessary component of a living thing.