Do you NEED an explanation for "everything"?

[ughaibu]

you still have yet to introduce free will as a fact to be explained. While such is a digression, true, I'd be interested in what you see as the fact which determinists feel cannot be explained. That would go a long way to clearing up my confusion about which aspects of your example you were trying to show.

I see no reason to accept that free will is highly unlikely to exist, particularly as it is easy to demonstrate what appears to be free will. Also, as all healthy human beings unavoidably assume and successfully act on the assumption that they have free will (what Wegner et al call "the illusion of free will"), denial of free will is denial of observation, and no theory can outrank observation without entailing triviality.
An agent has free will on occasions when that agent makes and enacts a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives. The explanatory problem isn't limited to deterministic models, it also applies to probabilistic models. So, if an explanation is possible, that explanation is not, as far as I know, within the present repertoire of scientific explanations, because the explanatory model would need a prediction generating algorithm which is neither deterministic nor probabilistic. This problem seems to be intractable, as it follows from the dual requirements of realisable alternatives and the intentional selection of conscious choice.

Anyway, I neglected to do so earlier, so let me apologize for my rather uncharitable reading of your point.

No problem and thanks for the apology.

[hiyymer]

you still have yet to introduce free will as a fact to be explained. While such is a digression, true, I'd be interested in what you see as the fact which determinists feel cannot be explained. That would go a long way to clearing up my confusion about which aspects of your example you were trying to show.

I see no reason to accept that free will is highly unlikely to exist, particularly as it is easy to demonstrate what appears to be free will. Also, as all healthy human beings unavoidably assume and successfully act on the assumption that they have free will (what Wegner et al call "the illusion of free will"), denial of free will is denial of observation, and no theory can outrank observation without entailing triviality.
An agent has free will on occasions when that agent makes and enacts a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives. The explanatory problem isn't limited to deterministic models, it also applies to probabilistic models. So, if an explanation is possible, that explanation is not, as far as I know, within the present repertoire of scientific explanations, because the explanatory model would need a prediction generating algorithm which is neither deterministic nor probabilistic. This problem seems to be intractable, as it follows from the dual requirements of realisable alternatives and the intentional selection of conscious choice.

Anyway, I neglected to do so earlier, so let me apologize for my rather uncharitable reading of your point.

No problem and thanks for the apology.

There's a story about the little boy coming home from his fancy NYC private school and telling his mom about evolution, and mom says well that can't be because it says in the bible... And the little boy says, "But mom, they found the bones". Free will is more of a case that they didn't find the bones. If a self-caused free-willed agent exists anywhere else but in our experience, where is it? Neuroscience has come a long way, and there is still no control center in the brain; no homunculus. It's kind of like God. Your argument is tantamount to "God exists because I experience God all the time and see his works in my daily life". Doesn't it come down to what one means by "exist"? If it's not the physical world out there independent of our experience that science seeks to uncover, then all bets are off. Anything in your conscious experience that you experience as transparently real, exists. And the only standard of what "objectively" exists, is the number of people that have that similar experience. I find the argument that not everyone has a God but everyone has a self to be rather lame, and I find the rationalist who is an anti-theist on the one hand (God doesn't "exist"), and a defender of free will on the other, to be dabbling in hypocrisy. Agency is agency.

[ughaibu]

Free will is more of a case that they didn't find the bones.

An agent has free will on occasions when that agent makes and enacts a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives.
1) I can type 10 and I can type 01, thus I have established a set of realisable alternatives.
2) I am conscious.
3) I have considered the expected result of each selection.
4) I have made a selection.
5) 01.
Thus I have demonstrated the enactment of a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives. If you have some reason to doubt this demonstration, what is it?

If it's not the physical world out there independent of our experience that science seeks to uncover, then all bets are off.

Science is the business of constructing models which allow predictions of the probabilities of making certain observations, given certain other observations. The models of science carry no ontological commitments and are thus independent of notions of truth or reality, and science is irreducibly dependent upon human experience, in the form of observation.

[GrahamH]

A model of what a brain is doing is necessarily much simpler than the brain itself. A model of brain behaviour can be framed in terms of simple elements such as wants, emotions, sensations etc. and do a good enough job.

That sounds like a model of our experience; like psychology.

Psychology is behaviour modelling of a sort, but I am thinking of something like heuristic machine learning that generates its own classifications for classes of behaviour. The brain learns to recognise patterns of neural activity indicative of various behaviours. The mapping of such a system will be imprecise but good enough for many situations.

As an analogy, consider a face recognition system that is trained by being shown lots of face images and non-face images. It 'works out' what constitutes a face in an image. Such a system can be quite effective at detecting faces, but it may see faces where there are none, or miss some real faces.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Free will is more of a case that they didn't find the bones.

An agent has free will on occasions when that agent makes and enacts a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives.
1) I can type 10 and I can type 01, thus I have established a set of realisable alternatives.
2) I am conscious.
3) I have considered the expected result of each selection.
4) I have made a selection.
5) 01.
Thus I have demonstrated the enactment of a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives. If you have some reason to doubt this demonstration, what is it?

If it's not the physical world out there independent of our experience that science seeks to uncover, then all bets are off.

Science is the business of constructing models which allow predictions of the probabilities of making certain observations, given certain other observations. The models of science carry no ontological commitments and are thus independent of notions of truth or reality, and science is irreducibly dependent upon human experience, in the form of observation.

But how did you decide on typing "01"? What on Earth makes you think that the choice was free? Even if you used a coin-flip, the decision to either accept or reject the flip, or which number was represented by heads and which by tails, had to be made. How do you know that your choice wasn't governed by subconscious urges that you are blithely unaware of?

Just because you can choose between two alternatives, doesn't make that choice free. You haven't demonstrated "free-will", merely "will".

[Hermit]

1) I can type 10 and I can type 01, thus I have established a set of realisable alternatives.
2) I am conscious.
3) I have considered the expected result of each selection.
4) I have made a selection.
5) 01.
Thus I have demonstrated the enactment of a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives. If you have some reason to doubt this demonstration, what is it?

Your argument is tantamount to "God exists because I experience God all the time and see his works in my daily life".

[GrahamH]

Free will is more of a case that they didn't find the bones.

An agent has free will on occasions when that agent makes and enacts a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives.
1) I can type 10 and I can type 01, thus I have established a set of realisable alternatives.
2) I am conscious.
3) I have considered the expected result of each selection.
4) I have made a selection.
5) 01.
Thus I have demonstrated the enactment of a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives. If you have some reason to doubt this demonstration, what is it?

If it's not the physical world out there independent of our experience that science seeks to uncover, then all bets are off.

Science is the business of constructing models which allow predictions of the probabilities of making certain observations, given certain other observations. The models of science carry no ontological commitments and are thus independent of notions of truth or reality, and science is irreducibly dependent upon human experience, in the form of observation.

There is a difference between making choices and making entirely free will choices. A system can select between predicted outcomes based on some preferential scoring of those outcomes. That is not free will.

It is evidennt that our choices have more influences that we can identify. This is not surprising. It follows that we cannot know the precise full causal history of any choice we make. We don;t know ourselves well enough. All choices will heva unknown factors, but thoes factors may not be free of material causes.

Of course we have no way ro establish what are realisable alternatives. We can only make predictions for what may be realisable and subsequently we select the one realised action.

Concious choice is about predicting a set that hopefully contains the outcome that is realised. That prediction process will play its part in the realised action. The recognition of likely outcomes is consistent with a deterministic system.

[ughaibu]

An agent has free will on occasions when that agent makes and enacts a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives.
I have demonstrated the enactment of a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives.

What on Earth makes you think that the choice was free?

As far as I can tell, I satisfied the definition. Certainly you haven't demonstrated otherwise.

You haven't demonstrated "free-will", merely "will".

And you haven't offered any serious objection to the demonstration.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

An agent has free will on occasions when that agent makes and enacts a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives.
I have demonstrated the enactment of a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives.

What on Earth makes you think that the choice was free?

As far as I can tell, I satisfied the definition. Certainly you haven't demonstrated otherwise.

You haven't demonstrated "free-will", merely "will".

And you haven't offered any serious objection to the demonstration.

Ahem! Burden of proof? You are the one claiming it was a free choice and more, that it is demonstrably free. I am merely querying how your experiment shows that. All I have seen is that you came to the conclusion to type "01" in some manner. For all I know, you could have had a gun to your head!

[ughaibu]

For all I know, you could have had a gun to your head!

Sure, pigs might fly and you could be a figment of my imagination. If you have no serious challenge to the demonstration, dont expect further replies about this matter.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

For all I know, you could have had a gun to your head!

Sure, pigs might fly and you could be a figment of my imagination. If you have no serious challenge to the demonstration, dont expect further replies about this matter.

I have already made my challenge. I will repeat it in simple terms: -

How can anyone tell from your post that your decision to type "01" instead of "10" was made from free-will? You have simply stated that it was. Am I expected to accept an argument from hearsay or authority?

[hiyymer]

Free will is more of a case that they didn't find the bones.

An agent has free will on occasions when that agent makes and enacts a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives.
1) I can type 10 and I can type 01, thus I have established a set of realisable alternatives.
2) I am conscious.
3) I have considered the expected result of each selection.
4) I have made a selection.
5) 01.
Thus I have demonstrated the enactment of a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives. If you have some reason to doubt this demonstration, what is it?

If it's not the physical world out there independent of our experience that science seeks to uncover, then all bets are off.

Science is the business of constructing models which allow predictions of the probabilities of making certain observations, given certain other observations. The models of science carry no ontological commitments and are thus independent of notions of truth or reality, and science is irreducibly dependent upon human experience, in the form of observation.

If that were true then the observation that the tree is green would be a scientific statement. Yet, by the wonders of inductive reasoning, we are very sure (not certain) that the tree is not green but is only reflecting light in a way that creates the experience of green in our conscious experience. There is an ontological consequence of science on the physical existence of color. The models of science are not one-off relationships between observations, but are built on the premise of a natural rational caused reality where all theories (not really models) are ultimately consistent with each other. It is built on inductive reasoning. It is certainly true that there is no ontological proof that the view of science corresponds in any way at all to "reality", but... if the physical world is not caused and rational and something like what science says it is, then why is science so successful?

In any event, what the average rationalist means by "exists" is exactly what you say it is. If it is not part of the logical infrastructure that defines science's best shot at "reality" at the moment, then it doesn't "exist". Under that definition of exist, God and resurrections and miracles that defy science don't "exist" until someone not only "observes" a god, but establishes that what is observed is not only in the eyes of the observer but is also logically consistent with the rest of what is known to "exist". You are quite right to point out the provisional nature of all this. But wrong, IMO, to say that science is only about one-off relationships between observations.

[charlou]

Hi ughaibu ...

An agent has free will on occasions when that agent makes and enacts a conscious choice from amongst realisable alternatives.
1) I can type 10 and I can type 01, thus I have established a set of realisable alternatives.
2) I am conscious.
3) I have considered the expected result of each selection.
4) I have made a selection.
5) 01.

You considered the expected result of each selection ... What were your considerations? Why did you decide on 01?

[ughaibu]

If that were true then the observation that the tree is green would be a scientific statement.

No it wouldn't. That science is dependent on observation doesn't entail that all observation is science. If you think that there's such an entailment, spell out the inferences.

[ughaibu]

Why did you decide on 01?

The shape seemed easier on the eye.